


Remove Before Flight

by skyline



Category: South Park
Genre: Fake/Pretend Relationship, Fluff and Angst, Kenny has the sads, Kenny's dick is bomb dot com I guess, Kyle has commitment issues, M/M, Mostly Crack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-04
Updated: 2019-01-18
Packaged: 2019-07-06 16:58:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 36,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15890226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skyline/pseuds/skyline
Summary: Five days after he begins a prestigious residency at a big name hospital in Washington state, Kyle Broflovski returns to South Park.And no one knows why.





	1. Chapter 1

Five days after he begins a prestigious residency at a big name hospital in Washington state, Kyle Broflovski returns to South Park.

He arrives on a red eye bus in the wee hours of the morning, head ducked inside the hood of his neon green parka. For some reason, he seems to imagine the coat provides him an element of stealth.

It does not.

Kyle goes straight to his own house, using the brass key under the handwoven welcome mat to get inside. Once there, he does not call out to his mother or father, or trade _hellos_ with his little brother, curled up in a knit afghan with a good, Canadian book on the sofa.

Instead, Kyle heads straight up to his childhood bedroom, pulls back the comforter, and swan dives beneath it.

He thinks he’s pulled off this great caper without a single witness.

However, despite his masquerade, no fewer than three residents of South Park spot Kyle on his covert adventure. Clyde Donovan, on his way to grab his second morning perk-me-up, in the form of a no-whip-no-foam-double-cup-soy-latte; the owner of the Kum & Go, who has no idea who Kyle Broflovski is or why he should care; and Carol McCormick, who knows precisely who Kyle is but doesn’t give a single iota of a fuck.

For their own reasons, each person lets it slip to someone else that Kyle is back. In fact, Kenny McCormick – friend, employee, and son – hears it from all three of them.

But he’s not the only one. By noon that day, everyone knows.

And no one knows why.

Kyle doesn’t provide an explanation.

He doesn’t reemerge from under his comforter for an entire month.

* * *

 

Kenny McCormick wants exactly three things in life.

Peace and quiet.

Not to die.

Occasional sex.

He’s not all that picky about where the last one comes from, who it’s with, or even how often it happens. Kenny’s a laid back kind of guy, and life finds a way.

Like right now. He’s got all three boxes ticked.

It’s quiet inside the Kum & Go, aside from the gentle hum of fluorescent lighting and the fridges up against the wall. Kenny is decidedly not dead. And, as to the third, he’s thumbing through a back issue of Babes, Guns, and Ball-gags, supremely unconcerned about anything outside of its pages.

He ignores the hee-haw of the door chime when it opens, fully focused on a busty brunette with a silvery pistol pressed along the shape of her thigh. He ignores the soft pad of footsteps up to the counter, examining the bright blue ball-gag in the girl’s mouth, and her nipples, the size of dinner plates. He even ignores the breathy little _ahem_ that follows a moment later, in what is truly dedication to the pornographic craft.

What Kenny can’t ignore is the grating voice going, “Kenny. Kenny. _Kenny_.”

The woman on the glossy pages of his magazine winks up at him, mocking this complete intrusion into his peaceful Friday afternoon. Irritably, Kenny decides to see who is disturbing his Zen.

“Oh. It’s you.”

Token Black stands in front of him, arms crossed, in a sharp suit and dark shades. He can afford it, too. He works out of a fancy pants medical practice in North Park, where people pay him a buttload to like, look at their vaginas or something. Kenny’s fuzzy on the details.

Kenny’s also fuzzy about why Token’s here.

“Nice to see you too,” Token tells him.

He does not have anything in his hands, no Gatorade or Fritos or corn nuts, and Kenny doesn’t really _do_ social calls.

“Do you want to buy something, or…?” Kenny trails off, trying very pointedly to indicate that he’s busy.

Token peers down at the magazine in Kenny’s lap. He points out, “She looks like our sixth grade English teacher. Didn’t you sleep with her?”

“It was one time,” Kenny replies dreamily, eyes drifting back down to the sumptuous curve of the magazine-lady’s bosom. “She had great tits.”

The brunette in the magazine also has great tits. Kenny would very much like to get back to them. He gazes back up at Token expectantly.

Token sighs and takes off his sunglasses. “We have a problem.”

“Not that I can see.”

“Don’t be an ass, McCormick. Have you heard Kyle’s back home?”

“For a century, now.”

“A month,” Token corrects. “His mom can’t get him out of bed.”

“If she was my mom, I wouldn’t leave my room either.”

“Funny.” Token wrinkles his nose. “I’ve tried everything I can, but Kyle won’t listen to me. He needs one of you idiots.”

Kenny doesn’t have to ask who ‘one of you idiots’ is. It’s him, Cartman, and Stan. It’s always him, Cartman, and Stan.

So Kenny does his good friend duty and asks, “Have you asked Stan?”

“Stan’s on a week long stint in Toronto, teaching Canucks how to find their _inner light_. And god knows where Cartman is-“

“False flag operation. Iraq,” Kenny replies mildly.

“That’s- you know, I didn’t really need to know that.” Token scratches behind his ears. His car keys jingle in the pocket of his suit when he shifts. “Have you tried to see Kyle already?”

“Nah. Far as I’ve heard, Kyle doesn’t want to be seen.”

“Kenny. His mom’s _worried_.”

Kenny’s chest heaves, this exasperated noise that echoes around the Kum & Go. He asks Token, “Do you know what happened?”

Token nods. “Burn out. It happens to the best of us.”

The best of us being doctors. People like him and Kyle, who have fancy degrees and are trying to change the world.

Kenny doesn’t have any degrees, and his biggest contributions to society are YouTube videos displaying his varied, grisly deaths.

He does have an in with Kyle, though. He supposes he can use it.

For the greater good of humanity.

He tells Token, “I’ll stop by after work.”

“Thanks, man. I really appreciate it.”

“No big.” As Token pivots to leave, he calls, “Touch some hoo-has for me!”

He doesn’t get an answer on that.

* * *

 

Craig shows up around four to let Kenny off the hook.

Kenny’s already forgone his titty rag in favor of a paperback Christophe left behind before he rage-quit for the fifth time. It’s some bullshit emo novel about a really sad French dude and his dead mom, but it’s that or reading another issue of Cosmo, and Kenny already knows he looks best in cool tones and which sexual positions he prefers. 

“’Sup, Duder?” Craig asks, shoving Kenny off the ripped red vinyl stool behind the counter.

Kenny sits right back down on Craig’s lap, throws his arms around his neck, and says, “Tell me about your day, honey.”

Craig rolls his eyes skyward. “You’re such a fag.”

“Right, right. Remind me, how long has it been since Tweek last spoke to you?”

“Six hundred and fifty-seven days,” Craig replies easily. “And bite me.”

Kenny does, nipping Craig’s neck with affection before he scoots up to his feet. “I’d love to stay and therapize, but I’ve got errands to run.”

“Jacking off in the parking lot doesn’t count as an errand.”

“Did that earlier,” Kenny retorts. “Right where you’re sitting. And no, I’ve got to go see Kyle.”

“Broflovski?” Craig perks up, tugging on the strings of his hat. “No shit? I thought he wasn’t talking to anyone.”

“I plan on being the first.”

“Bet that’ll piss Marsh off,” Craig replies admiringly. “Go get your man.”

“Try not to text yours,” Kenny tells him, already knowing it’s a lost cause. Craig sends Tweek approximately sixty-two texts a day.

They all go unanswered, because Tweek blocked him ages ago, but Craig is nothing if not persistent. Or pitiful. Kenny can’t quite decide which.

He adds, “Say hi to Clyde for me.”

“You don’t know he’ll come in.”

“He’ll come in.” Kenny grabs a bottle of water off the wire rack by the door and waves his middle finger at Craig in a fond farewell.

Craig returns it, but he’s already got his phone in hand. Poor guy.

* * *

 

The walk to the Broflovski’s takes about ten minutes.

Kenny’s jeans are threadbare, but his parka is brand new. He burrows deeply into it, doing his best to avoid hypothermia. He’s died that way thirteen times. He doesn’t want to make it fourteen.

When he gets to the front steps of Kyle’s house, Kenny pastes on his best, biggest smile and knocks hard. Sheila Broflovski opens the door.

Kenny’s not sure how Token could tell that she’s worried. She looks exactly the same to him. Which is to say, slightly disdainful and rotund.

But the moment her eyes land on Kenny, she exclaims, “ _Kenny_!” and reaches out to pull him into a bear hug. He immediately feels bad for judging her, because bear hugs are a thing the Broflovski family is really, really good at. Kenny returns it with all his might.

It’s been a long time since he’s had any kind of hug.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” Sheila tells him. “You’re going to talk to Kyle and snap him out of this funk, and then- and then-“

Her eyes begin to water.

“I’ll talk to him, Mrs. Broflovski,” Kenny soothes, nuzzling up against her breasts. “Don’t you worry.”

Sheila catches on to what he’s doing and drops her arms pretty quickly. She points towards the stairs, wiping at a stray tear. “Well. You know the way.”

Kenny does.

He barges through Kyle’s door without knocking, because he can’t actually remember the last time he knocked to go inside Kyle’s room. It looks mostly the same as the last time he was inside it, sometime around Kyle’s sophomore year in college. Kyle hasn’t really been back since, moving from graduation onto med school, and med school to his residency.

Kenny’s talked to him on the phone, but he realizes with distant apathy that this is going to be the first time he’s seen Kyle in person in going on five years. Except that Kyle’s person is buried beneath a green and orange checked comforter. So Kenny doesn’t see him so much as a hump of fabric, accentuated by the stench of unwashed male.

Kenny sits next to the gathered folds of the comforter, poking his finger against a green check, and remarks, “This is disgusting, dude. Your room smells like Park County’s locker rooms.”

A tuft of red curls peeks out near the foot of the bed, followed by a wide, green eye. “Kenny!”

“Howdy,” Kenny replies, leaning his weight back against what he presumes in Kyle’s body. “How’s it feel being town Drama Queen?”

Resentfully, Kyle says, “I can’t believe they sent you to check up on me.”

“What, you’d prefer Lady-In-Waiting Marsh?”

“I don’t wanna see Stan,” Kyle grumbles.

“Oo-ooh.” Kenny purses his lips, drawing the word out. “Lover’s spat?”

A pillow flies at him from unknown origin. Kyle and the bed must be merging into one, sentient organism.

Kenny dodges with practiced ease.

All kinds of things fly at his head, all the time. Bricks. Knives. Shovels. A semi-truck, on one memorable occasion.

When he straightens back up, he does so with bunches of bedspread gathered in his hands. He begins to tug the comforter free of Kyle’s grasp, inch by inch.

Kyle gives a strangled shout and tries to pull it back, but his muscles are atrophying from his month long staycation. He’s got the grip of a four-year-old girl.

“Kenny!” Kyle grits out when Kenny throws the whole shebang on the floor. His pale toes squirm beneath the long hems of turtle-print pajama bottoms. Kenny lets himself look, his chest warming for half a beat before he wrenches his eyes away. “I need that.”

“I need you to stop being a pussy,” Kenny rejoins hotly. “When people worry about you, they come and complain. To _me_!”

 Kyle’s face falls. “Sorry, man. I’m didn’t mean for anyone to bug you.”

“Like hell. Why are you shacked up in here, freaking everyone out? You’ve got the Stotch family convinced you came back as a poltergeist. They haven’t come out of their basement for three days.”

Kenny doesn’t actually care about the Stotch family’s dark descent into the ground. He heard about it from Craig yesterday and found the whole thing hilarious. But Kyle will care. Kyle’s really big on caring.

Like clockwork, Kyle’s eyes get even bigger and rounder. He pulls his knees up to his bony chest, an oversized NASA t-shirt hanging across his shoulders. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t tell me. Tell Butters. His parents are probably making him eat his grandma’s toe jam.”

Kyle shudders. “Sick.”

Kenny eyes the jut of Kyle’s collarbone from under his t-shirt and says, “You look like you survived a POW camp.”

“That’s not even a little bit of an okay thing to say.”

Kenny shrugs. “Welcome home.”

Kyle cracks a smile at that. But it falters, almost immediately.

“What’s everyone saying. About…about why I’m back?”

Kenny blinks. “Token says you burned out. There’s a few other theories, though. Randy’s telling everyone a cult up there tried to give you special Kool-Aid.”

Kyle rolls his eyes. “ _Randy_.”

Yeah, Randy. Stan’s dad’s a real prize. Kenny doesn’t say so, though.

“You going to tell me the real reason, or d’you want me to skedaddle?”

Surprise colors Kyle’s features. “You’d let me stay here?”

“You’re a grown ass man, Broflovski. Ain’t no _letting_ you do anything.” Kenny shifts uncomfortably, out of practice with things like friendship. “But if you want to talk, I’m here.”

He assumes Kyle’s not going to say anything, at first. He merely sits there, staring at Kenny, with his lower lip trembling something fierce.

Kenny’s never been one to stay where he’s not wanted, so he’s about up and ready to go, when Kyle bursts, “Seattle was terrible! All. They did. In that stupid hospital. Was have sex. We lost six patients on the first day! _Six_. A nurse groped my ass while I was trying to insert a catheter!”

Privately, Kenny doesn’t think any of it sounds so bad, but he stays quiet and lets Kyle vent.

“We had one patient who needed open heart surgery, and the cardiothoracic lead started fucking an intern, right there on the operating table. There was blood everywhere!”

Kyle looks around nervously, like the doctor in question will somehow hear his accusations of malpractice.

“I couldn’t stay, Kenny. I couldn’t.”

“Sure,” Kenny replies, because that seems reasonable enough. But there’s still something he doesn’t get. “So you came home, and you hid, because you’re a proud bastard-“

“Am not,” Kyle protests, as if his ego isn’t the stuff of legends.

“Proud bastard,” Kenny insists. “And then you proceeded not to talk to anyone because..?”

Meekly, Kyle says, “I facetimed Cartman a few times. Did you know he’s in Iraq?”

“’ _Merica_ ,” Kenny deadpans back. “You talked to Cartman, before me, or Stan?”

Kyle blanches.

Which means this is about Stan.

Of course it’s about Stan. Literally everything Kyle does revolves around Stan, in some way, shape, or form. They’ve been inseparable since birth.

It makes Kenny exhausted even thinking about it.

Despising himself the moment he does opens his mouth, Kenny asks, “Do you want to tell me about it?”

He doesn’t want to hear about it, is the thing. He’s perpetually the third wheel on the Kyle-and-Stan tilt-a-whirl, and he’s been wishing he could get off since, oh, fourth grade?

But that isn’t in the cards for Kenny McCormick. He’s known that for as long as he’s known them.

Wearily, Kyle tells him, “No. I don’t want to talk about Stan.”

“Fantastic. I’ll just send him over here when he’s back from mindbending Canada.”

“No!” Kyle practically shrieks, limbs flailing wildly. He falls out of the bed with a thump.

Kenny leans over, bangs hanging in his pale blue eyes. He brushes them away and announces, “That sounds like it hurt.”

“I hate you,” Kyle snaps back miserably. He props himself up on one elbow and glares at Kenny through his unruly mop of red hair. “Don’t you dare send Stan over here.”

“You understand I have zero control over that, right? If he gets back and he hears you’re still playing hermit, he’s going to come, no matter what I say.”

Kenny’s surprised he hasn’t already. Stan was around the first few weeks of Kyle’s exile. He’d wonder what happened, except, no, Kenny is steadfast in not caring.

“Kenny,” Kyle pleads. “I can’t see him.”

Kenny slumps all the way back on the bed, his head knocking against Kyle’s windowsill. He stares up, out the glass, at the sickly sky spanning over South Park.

He says, “I bet it will snow tonight,” which, around these parts is akin to saying, _Bet the sun will rise today_ , or _Bet the sky is going to be some kind of blue_.

Kyle grunts an affirmation, clambering back up onto the sheets. He stretches his gangly legs over Kenny’s lap, his head dangling off the foot of the bed.

Kenny wraps one hand around Kyle’s skinny ankle. He tells him, “You have to come out tonight.”

Kyle nods, listlessly. He knows it’s the only way to avoid a Stan-tervention. He raises his head briefly to ask, “Anything good happening?”

Kenny lifts one shoulder, countering, “Has anything good ever happened here?”

Kyle sags back down.

His ankle is warm and bony in Kenny’s palm. He can feel Kyle’s pulse near the top of his foot.

He doesn’t let go.

* * *

 

Kenny spends twenty minutes toeing around the Broflovski’s foyer, examining family portraits while Sheila attempts to smother her eldest son.

“Bubbelah, you’re so _thin_ , you’ll catch a chill-“

He touches a still of Kyle’s face at seventeen, crooked smile as familiar as Kenny’s own. In the photo, he’s got one arm wrapped around Ike. The two boys are sitting on the front steps next to a vaguely menacing snowman.

The snowmen invaded that year, Kenny thinks. He remembers that happening. One of them gobbled him up, and he missed the Junior Winter Dance.

“-you haven’t seen daylight in ages. We don’t want you to burn.”

“Ma, I’m not going to-“

There’s another picture, a year later. Graduation. Kyle is sandwiched between his parents, both arms around Ike, at the front. They have such a normal family, at least as far as Kenny understands normal.

“You need at least two more scarfs,” Sheila chides. “And some sunscreen!”

“Sunscreen?” Kyle shrills, “It’s nighttime!”

Kenny doesn’t have any graduation photos. He has the diploma, and a tassel. Proof he was there. But his parents couldn’t afford a camera. His mom didn’t even bothering showing up.

Kyle grins up at him from a framed shot of a family ski trip. He’s all wicked delight, about to conquer the slopes. Kenny traces the shape of his smile.

“Ma, I don’t need to take _snacks_ -“

In high school, Kyle was the center of Kenny’s world. Kenny would have done anything – _anything_ – to make him smile like that.

“You might get hungry! At least bring the granola-“

Kenny couldn’t care less if Kyle smiles now.

That’s what he tells himself.

Footsteps herald the end of Sheila’s extreme mothering.

Kyle appears at Kenny’s side, a tiny grin wobbling on his lips. “Ready to go? I need to get out of here before she demands round two.”

Myriad Kyles from days long past beam enticingly around them.

Kenny doesn’t meet any of their eyes.

“Let’s hit the road.”

* * *

 

The night is cold enough that breathing feels like swallowing razorblades. They keep a brisk pace to the edge of town, where Craig’s shabby apartment building glows with happy warmth.

“I didn’t know you and Craig were close,” Kyle comments, rubbing his mittened fingers together like it’s going to accomplish anything. He’s been in the Pacific Northwest too long.

Kenny snorts, huddling deeper into his parka. “I wouldn’t phrase it that way. We work together.”

Perplexed, Kyle replies, “But you’re friends, right?”

“We have a relationship of convenience.”

Kyle’s eyes narrow. “So you’re sleeping together.”

Kenny’s foot slips over a patch of ice. He barks out a yelp, arms wind-milling through the air. He’d probably crack his skull open if Kyle doesn’t catch him, steady hands sliding around his ribcage.

Kenny’s lungs squeeze tight, and he shakes Kyle off, objecting, “That is _not_ what I said.”

Holding his hands palms out towards Kenny, Kyle soothes, “Okay. Okay, sorry. I misread the situation.”

“Fuckin’ presumptuous.”

Kyle cuts his gaze towards Kenny. His irises are silvery-green in the moonlight. “Is it, though? Craig’s got to be pretty lonely without Tweek.”

“One.” Kenny ticks off a finger. “Craig’s feelings are not my problem.”

“Understood.”

Slightly mollified, Kenny folds down a second finger. “Two, Craig’s not over Tweek, and I’ve got self-respect. Three, Clyde Donovan would use my balls for Varsity football practice if I even tried.”

“He’s coaching? I thought Stan-“ Kyle abruptly stops talking.

Subtle.

“They share the job,” Kenny explains, even though Kyle’s evidently got a fatwa out on all things Stan Marsh.

“Gotcha. But why would Clyde care if you and Craig…?” He makes a rude gesture that Kenny interprets to mean _ass fuck_.

Kenny swallows bile at the very idea of it, muttering, “Dude’s got a boner for the guy.”

Their feet crunch over ice and snow while Kyle, stunned, processes.

Finally, he says, “Clyde. Clyde Donovan. The most popular kid at our school, Clyde?”

“Got it in one,” Kenny agrees. “But you forgot salesman extraordinaire.”

“What does he sell?”

“That’s the mystery. Town’s got bets on the human trafficking, cocaine, or GMO-free vegetables.”

“Huh.” Kyle’s doing that thing where he’s wrapped up in his own head, barely watching where he steps. He nearly skids off the curb, but Kenny catches his elbow, course-correcting. “I thought Clyde stopped talking to Craig after he puked in his Beamer?”

“What can I say? Man’s dickmatized.”

Kyle groans, breath gusting up so hard it rustles a few strands of red peeking from under his ushanka.

“I didn’t need that visual.”

“What, of Craig’s magic stick? I’d wager it’s about…ye…big?” Kenny holds his hands up to demonstrate. He’s being generous – no way is Craig’s skinny, stoner ass packing that much heat.

“Stop!” Kyle pleads, covering his eyes with one hand. Snow clings to his mittens, his eyelashes, and the red curve of his mouth.

Kenny does not watch the way it melts there. He says, “Clyde comes to the station at least once a day and buys the most random bullshit. Condoms, cranberry juice…Last week it was five boxes of laxatives.”

“You’re joking.”

“I’m not,” Kenny crows. “Craig thinks he just has a really big bowel issue.”

Kyle huffs a laugh, cheeks pink from the cold and exertion.

He looks better. Less broken. Kenny smiles, despite himself. “Poor bastard has no idea.”

He is going to say more, to see whether he can make Kyle laugh like that again, but his phone strikes up a steady buzz in his pocket. Kenny extracts it, grimacing when he spots the caller ID.

“Sorry. I have to take this or she’ll keep calling.” He flips the phone against his ear. “Wendy.”

_Wendy_? Kyle mouths, bug-eyed.

“Kenny,” she acknowledges down a static filled line. “How’s Stan tonight?”

“In the Great White North, apparently,” Kenny replies in the pleasantest tone he owns. He knows better than to piss Wendy off. “No wacky spy hijinks for me this evening.”

Wendy clicks her tongue in disappointment. In the background, Kenny can hear street sounds, traffic and pedestrians. The noise of big city DC, where Wendy works at an up-and-coming NGO. “Too bad. This time next week?”

“I’d prefer not to.”

“Talk to you then? Thanks, Kenny! Kisses!”

She hangs up, because of course she does. Kenny frowns, pocketing his phone.

A bit fearfully, Kyle asks, “Why, uh. Why is Wendy Testaburger calling you?”

“We’re friends?” Kenny ventures without enthusiasm.

Smarty Pants Broflovski doesn’t buy it, anyway. He knows Wendy’s never cared much for either of them. He cocks an eyebrow at Kenny and asks, “Like how you and Craig are friends?”

“Are you asking if I’m sleeping with Wendy?”

“No! But are you?”

“No! Jesus _fuck_ , Broflovski. That hospital really did a number on you.”

“I told you!” Kyle wails. He immediately starts up a tirade about scalpels going places a scalpel should definitely not be.

Kenny exhales, his breath crystallizing in front of him. He can see Craig’s complex a few blocks up, yellow lamplights like fireflies through frost-coated windows.

Craig and Tweek used to live there together. ‘Til Craig tried to wean Tweek off caffeine. Little spaz never forgave him.

It’s weird what sets people off.

Kenny interrupts a vignette about sodomy and on-call rooms, saying, “She has me checking up on him. Stan, I mean.”

Kyle’s steps falter. He hugs himself, for warmth, and asks, “Why would she do that?”

Kenny honestly has no real answer. Everyone from this town is a psycho, which has always been answer enough, for him.

“She’s Wendy. He’s Stan. Even when they’re not together, they’re still…” He presumes Kyle gets the point. “It’s a real pain in my ass, though. I can only drop in on the guy so many times a week before I’m a real Clyde Donovan, amirite? I’ve had to get creative. Hide in bushes. Use costumes.”

Kyle’s still right in front of him, but he’s also not. He’s staring out into the distance, at something past the looming silhouettes of mountains.

Something Kenny can’t see.

Kenny’s not a mind reader, but he doesn’t need to be to know that Stan is never far from Kyle’s mind. “Hey, Kyle?”

“Hmm?”

“What happened with you guys? Why don’t you want to see Stan?”

That gets his attention. Squeezing his arms more tightly around himself, Kyle counters, “Why didn’t you come to see me sooner, Kenny?”

Kenny presses his lips together. Deflection. Cute.

Reluctantly, he starts, “It’s been so long. Since we talked. Really talked. Not just…caught up with each other between shifts at the Kum & Go or your anatomy classes.”

Kyle scrutinizes him, decoding his posture, his words. Trying to see what’s really going on inside. Kenny wishes he would stop.

He admits, “After all that time, I. Well. S’pose I didn’t remember how to be…what you needed.”

Kyle nods, as if the explanation is something other than half-assed floundering. As if it makes sense.

And now it’s his turn.

“You said it before. Stan’s…Stan. And he expects me to be the same person I’ve always been. But, Kenny…I’m not sure I know how.”

Kenny can understand that. Even if he doesn’t appreciate having his own words turned on him.

He jerks his chin towards Craig’s place. “It’s cold as balls out here. Double time it.”

They make the rest of the journey in silence.

* * *

 

Craig’s bong is the shining centerpiece of his living room.

Getting high isn’t really Kenny’s scene, but he’s accustomed to the perpetual cannabinoid fug clinging to Craig’s blue and beige walls. Kyle’s less adaptive, sitting on Craig’s multi-stained couch with trepidation, and none-to-subtly withdrawing his inhaler.

The whole place is too hot, with a wonky thermostat pushing the temperature closer to stuffy than tolerable, but it’s nice to get the feeling back in their toes.

Kenny plops down beside Kyle, the dip in the middle of the sofa making them slide right into each other. Kenny plants his feet and refuses to move, fighting against gravity.

He asks Craig, “Did Donovan stop by?”

Craig shrugs, splayed like a starfish on the floor. “Might’ve seen him.”

“Right. And how many times have you texted Tweek?”

Craig blows a slow smoke ring. “Nunya.”

Kyle coughs into his hand to hide his laugh. Kenny crooks a smile his way. “Want a beer?”

“’Ey!” Craig protests feebly, flailing his limbs. “Stop sharing my shit.”

“I’m being a good host, Tucker. I know you know how to do that. Remember Home Ec? Freshman year?”

Craig mulls it over. “Yeah. Crafting with Mrs. Peabody. Didn’t you fuck her?”

“It was one time,” Kenny replies easily.

He hops over Craig to get to the fridge, where he withdraws two craft brews from the local pub. Craig always has the good, fancy shit.

This time, when Kenny sits, he snuggles into Kyle’s side. Fuck gravity.

Surprised, Kyle accepts his beer.

He does not push Kenny away, which Kenny takes to mean they’re real buds again instead of people with history who occasionally talk on the phone.

“So, Broflovski.” Craig is pouting, still put out about the beer. “How was playing Howard Hughes?”

Light hits the line of Kyle’s jaw. It’s stronger than Kenny remembers. Manlier. A muscle in his cheek jumps as Kyle grinds out, “Damaging to my dignity.”

“Fair enough. At least you don’t have the-“ Craig wiggles his hands. “Fingernails.”

“Yeah. I’m disappointed, man. Token made out like you did.”

“ _Token_.” Kyle pales. “I’m a shit friend.”

Kenny hums his agreement. “Thanks for not turning me out into the street.”

“Ouch, Broflovski. The street? Doesn’t that break the science bro code?”

He’s right. Token and Kyle have been fast friends since they did the science fair together freshman year. They’d liked and respected each other before that, but in middle school, friend cliques were harder to break out of. Solid, like concrete. It was only when they got to high school, and Stan started playing Varsity – football, baseball, and lacrosse – that Kyle began to have more free time to dick around. Even with basketball and his AP course load. He grew closer to Token, that year.

He grew closer to Kenny, too.

But that was ages ago.

“I’m an ass,” Kyle whines against Kenny’s shoulder. Kenny jabs him in the fleshy bits under his ribs with his elbow, trying to get some distance, but it doesn’t work. “I am the worst kind of ass.”

“Token’s a forgiving guy,” Craig remarks from the floor. “He’s not gonna make you sweat.”

“He was mostly worried,” Kenny admits, picking at a hole in the thigh of his jeans.

He can smell Kyle’s hair, woods, snow, and sweat, and something a little citrus. The thaw’s making everything more pungent. And Kyle’s still leaning against his shoulder.

“I guess I better brace myself for an apology tour.”

Craig tells him, “You can start by buying me more beer.”

* * *

 

A few days later, Kenny’s got the night shift at the Kum & Go. He’s kicked back with a six pack of Miller, which is as fancy as he ever gets, unlike that punk bitch, Craig. The Stranger is propped open on the register.

Kenny still thinks Christophe has shit taste.

The only customer that’s been in all night is Clyde, who came searching for Craig with a box of tampons cradled lovingly in his arms.

The guy grew up devastatingly handsome, tall and broad-shouldered, with really great hair. Kenny’s got longer legs and a better butt, but it’s hard not to envy all of Clyde’s genetic blessings. Kenny’d watched him lope across the store appreciatively.

But Clyde hadn’t appreciated Kenny. When he saw him at the register, his entire face fell.

That’s probably why Kenny snarked, “You still going to get those?”

Embarrassed, Clyde pulled out his wallet. Like he really was having a heavy flow day. Pathetic.

Kenny waved him off. “Craig’s in first thing tomorrow morning.”

Clyde shifted from foot to foot. “Thanks, man. You, uh. You know your book’s upside down, right?”

Kenny shrugged. “Thought it might make it better.”

That charming exchange was at least three hours ago, and now? Kenny’s bored.

Kyle’s texted him on and off throughout the day, from under the protection of his blanket fort. He’ll leave it for a few hours at a time, but it’s going to take baby steps to break the spell of safety completely.

Kenny toys with his phone, thumbing over Kyle’s name in his inbox. He refuses to let himself feel…well, anything.

The door hee-haws, and Kenny’s head snaps up. His mouth drops open. “I thought you were teaching polar bears how to get in touch with their inner goddess.”

“It’s warmer in Toronto right now than it is here, fuck.” Stan shivers all over. “Doesn’t your boss pay for heat in this place?”

Kenny glances around. He doesn’t think it’s that frigid, but then again, he’s been distracted. He shoves a hand through his hair. It’s thick, and a little greasy. He moves shower to the front of his to-do list when he gets home.

“What can I do you for, old buddy, old pal?”

The side of Stan’s mouth curves. “I’m doing a drive by. I noticed you get antsy when I’m gone for too long.”

Kenny winces and fantasizes about how he wants to kill Wendy.

Stan continues, “But I can’t stay long. Bebe’s waiting in the car.”

“Can’t keep a lady waiting,” Kenny replies, raising both eyebrows.

Stan’s doing those awkward shuffle that’s almost more painful to watch than Clyde and his tampons. He runs his fingers over the display of Milky Ways. He must he’s being nonchalant when he asks, “Have you heard anything about Kyle?”

“Heard anything?” Kenny scoffs, leaning back on his stool. “I’m the one who got him to prison break. I risked life and limb going in his room. That boy is a biohazard.”

“Oh,” Stan says softly. “You’ve seen him.”

A tiny zing of victory flashes through Kenny. He’s one-upped Stan.

How rare.

“In the flesh. I hear you’re persona non grata.”

It’s Stan’s turn to startle. “He told you?”

Kenny’s reflection in the clear fridge doors makes his blond hair look like a halo. He’s an avenging angel, in this moment. He could say anything now. He could lie. He’s got oodles of power.

He doesn’t use it. “You know Kyle. Always playing it close to the chest.”

Stan breathes a sigh of relief.

“Glad to hear it. I mean, not glad- you know what, ignore me. I’m a little jet lagged.” Stan’s cobalt-blue eyes dart left to right, wild. “I’m going to head out. Now that we’ve done our check-in rendezvous. Whatever this is. Try not to show up in my tree this week.”

“It was a juniper shrub,” Kenny objects.

“Sure. That.” Stan backs out of the store. “Keep fighting the good fight.”

Kenny watches him turn tail and jog over to his sleek black car. He sees a flash of Bebe’s bright curls before Stan slams the door behind him.

Weirdo.

* * *

 

“You’re going to have to talk to Stan eventually,” Kenny tells Kyle, socked feet propped against the wall. His back and shoulders are against the under-stuffed futon he uses as a bed, his neck and head trailing onto the ground. “Aren’t you supposed to be best man at his wedding?”

Kyle’s sitting upright, his knees splayed out near Kenny’s face. His legs are as long as Kenny’s are, and between the two of them, they crowd all the air out of Kenny’s tiny bedroom.

“I’m not saying you’re wrong.” Kyle scratches behind his neck. A bag of chips they’ve abandoned crinkles when his body shifts. “I’m saying I’ll get to it when I get to it.”

Downstairs, the low murmur of voices drones on and on and on. Karen and Kevin are watching their soaps. The creak of the fridge means Kenny’s dad is grabbing a beer. The home-noises are comforting.

“Wow.” Kenny lifts his head. “This might be the longest I’ve ever seen you two go without communicating.”

“That can’t be true. Is it?” Kyle freaks. “It’s only been two months. Tell me we’re not that codependent.”

Kenny serves Kyle up with an expression that conveys, _Oh yes. You are_.

Kyle sags even further back against the wall, his face close enough to Kenny’s feet that he can probably smell them. He doesn’t move, though.

Kenny frowns. He’s got water stains on his ceiling in the shape of a guinea pig. That’s new.

“How did he look? When you saw him?” Kyle asks.

“He looked like Stan. Black hair. Black clothes. Shoulders of a linebacker? Any of this ringing a bell?”

“You know what I mean.”

Kenny sighs and sits up, tucking his legs beneath him. He faces Kyle fully. “No. I don’t. You’re being cagey about this entire thing, and maybe that’s because you got bad-touched by a lot of doctors, or maybe it’s because there’s something else you’re not telling me. I’m not going to drag it out of you, dude.”

Kyle gnaws on his lower lip.

Kenny has to distract himself with something else, anything else, to keep from looking.

“Tell me what this looks like to you?” He clicks a few buttons on his phone, messing around until he pulls up a picture that Kenny never, ever, ever wanted to see. He scarcely manages to cover his eyes in time, and there’s still a flash of pinkish, veiny flesh, burned into his retinas.

“Kyle! _Not cool_!”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“Agh, ugh, why would you even- That’s a penis, Kyle. What it looks like to me is a big old schlong!”

Satisfied, Kyle nods. “It’s Stan’s.”

“That’s even worse!”

“He said it was an accident. He said he meant to send it to Bebe. I should’ve just left it at that.”

“If the stupid picture bothers you so much, why do you have it saved?” Kenny howls, deeply scarred. “And why would you show it to me?”

Kenny’s dad thumps on the ceiling downstairs, calling for them to _keep it down up thar’_. Chastened, Kyle whispers, “I thought you’d want proof?”

“That Stan’s got the big gay hots for you? That’s common knowledge!” Kenny refuses to drop his hand, scissoring his fingers to check whether or not it’s safe. “Why don’t you believe he wrong numbered you?”

Glumly, Kyle replies, “I know Stan. He got shifty with me for days after he sent it.”

Kenny grumbles, “I can never unsee that.”

“Me either,” Kyle mourns, dropping his phone onto the futon. The screen is blessedly blank. “Why do you think I’m so confused?”

Kenny has a vested interest in not getting invested in this drama. He fists his hands in his scratchy sheets and reasons, “Booty calls aren’t that complicated, Kyle. You either liked it, which means you should talk to Stan, or you didn’t. Which means you should talk to Stan.”

“It’s not complicated when you put it like _that_. But you’re leaving out all the important bits,” Kyle retorts. Pink is rising high on his neck and his cheeks, a sure sign that he’s getting fired up. “Like the part where Stan’s been with Bebe for three years, or the part where this could seriously mess up our friendship, or you know. The part where I’m _not gay_?”

“Is Stan?’

Kyle scowls down at his phone. “I’m fifty-fifty on him batting for both teams.”

“There you go. You have options.”

“Yeah. Ruin his marriage or reject him. We’ve all seen how good Stan handles rejection.”

“You could go back to Washington. Pine from afar. The Wendy Testaburger method?”

“Pining isn’t my forte.” Kyle takes a deep breath. “I came back home because I wanted to- to see if I could make it work.” 

“Shtupping Stan?”

“Falling for Stan,” Kyle corrects. He shuts his eyes against the world. “But I can’t even work up the nerve to talk to him.”

Kenny wants to imitate him. Block out everything.

But even in darkness, he’d recognize the rise and fall of Kyle’s breath. The audible sound of him having a nervous breakdown, right there on Kenny’s bed.

He hates that he’s so hyper-aware of Kyle.

He hates that he can’t tell him to get the hell out of his house and deal with his own bullshit.

“Kyle. Stan loves you. In _a lot_ of ways, clearly.”

Kyle cracks an eyelid, glaring green. “Not helping.”

“However you’re imagining confronting him will go down, I guarantee you’re making it out to be ten times worse that the reality. He’ll understand. He’s a motivational speaker, for fuck’s sake. Understanding people is his _job_.”

“You make valid points.” Kyle leans forward, propping his arms against his knees. He lays his head against his crossed forearms, peering up at Kenny heavy-lidded, but shrewd. He says, “I’m sorry that I’m talking about this with you. I don’t know who else to tell.”

“Cartman?” Kenny suggests.

“I tried calling that fat asshole and some burly dude answered in Arabic. Either his op’s gone awry, or he’s gone dark.” Kyle performs a theatric full body shudder. Which is fair. Cartman unleashed is a scary thing.

“Fantastic. He’s gonna end up nuking Iraq.”

Kyle hums his agreement. His foot is touching Kenny’s knee, a patch of skin through a tiny hole.

He’s warm, Kenny notices. He’s warm, and Kenny wants to inch away.

He’s in the process of doing so when, tentatively, Kyle ventures, “Is this- is this okay? That we’re talking about this?”

Kenny jerks his knee away, the movement quick and jarring.

Kyle has the nerve to look hurt, but he doesn’t get to do that. Not when he’s bringing _this_ up. 

It’s not like it was ever some big secret, how Kenny felt. Back in high school. It’s just that neither of them have ever admitted it out loud. And Kenny was perfectly content never doing so.

He meets Kyle’s gaze head on. He’s over it now. He’s almost positive that he’s over it now. That he can say it, and it won’t hurt.

Rawer than Kenny means it to be, the words tumble out. “Because I was in love with you?”

Kenny wonders if Kyle will deny it. If he’ll say he had no idea. It’ll be a lie that both of them will swallow, because that’s how they’ve saved their friendship over the past ten years. By letting Kenny stand back and keep his mouth shut. By letting him watch Kyle chase Stan around, heart in his throat, while he stayed quiet.

Only, Kyle doesn’t deny it.

In a measured voice, he replies, “Yeah. Because of that.”

Kenny was wrong. It does ache. More than he thought it could. To hear Kyle admit that he’s known, all this time, is the tiniest sliver, a leftover shard of a dumb teen crush, that pierces Kenny’s aorta all over again. He might bleed out right here on his bed.

But before he does, he figures he should lay everything out on the table. If they’re going for brutal honesty tonight, he can at least give Kyle that.

“I’m not. Anymore.” Kenny clenches his fists even more tightly in the sheets and says, “But _not gay_ my ass, Broflovski. You were so in love with Stan in high school that Wendy tried to have you assassinated.”

Kyle doesn’t deny that either.

“Maybe I swing for both teams too.”

Kenny waits for further elaboration, giving Kyle his best interrogation stare. Reluctantly, Kyle continues, “I haven’t felt like that about Stan in a long time. I had to make myself stop.”

It’s something Kenny _emphatically_ understands. Thorns in his lungs, he asks, “Did it work?”

“I’m not sure yet. That’s the problem, Kenny. I was head over heels for the guy for so long that this feels…insulting? Like he’s messing with my head.”

“Stan wouldn’t do that.”

“I know that. But I’m not sure if my heart does.”

“Gay,” Kenny comments.

“Yeah. It really is. High school was so hard…” Kyle sounds like he’s grieving. Not talking about love. “I need to talk to Stan to find out whether I can go back down that path.”

“That’s what you’ll do, then.” Kenny swallows. “You’ll talk to Stan.”

And Stan will break it off with Bebe. Kyle and Stan will be what they were always meant to be.

Kenny will go back to the Kum & Go, hocking cigarettes and beer and teasing Craig about his long lost love. He won’t remember he ever had one of his own.

It’s how the epic saga of Stan and Kyle was always meant to play out. No use changing the narrative.

Kyle though. Kyle doesn’t seem to comprehend destiny. He says, “I don’t know how to approach him.”

Kenny sneaks a grip around Kyle’s phone, laying between them on the futon.

“You’re overthinking this.”

Kyle thunks his head back against Kenny’s wall. “Have you met me? I overthink everything.”

“I’m going to help you.” In one smooth move, Kenny flips himself onto his back, using Kyle’s lap as a pillow.

Kyle makes a small noise of surprise, which distracts him, perhaps, from asking how exactly Kenny plans on helping. That distraction gives Kenny enough time to key in Kyle’s passcode – it’s been the first eight digits of Pi since fifth grade. Kenny gambles that it hasn’t changed and wins.

Victory is his.

The screen unlocks, and he’s drafting a text to Stan in point three seconds, phone hovering over his face. By the time Kyle figures out he can’t use x-ray vision to see through his own Otter Box, Kenny’s already hit send.

“What did you do?” Kyle frowns down at him, puzzled.

“You’re meeting Stan tonight at Raisin’s.”

“What?”

The phone beeps, a thumbs up emoji appearing beneath Kenny’s text. “Stan’s already confirmed.”

Ghost pale, Kyle tells him, “That wasn’t your choice to make.”

“Please. You’ve pussyfooted around this for a month. I wouldn’t be infringing on your autonomy if you hadn’t dragged your feet in the first place, and dragged me into you and Stan’s little telenovela.”

The _again_ part of that sentence goes unspoken.

Kenny’s surprised to find that he’s genuinely pissed. He thought this tension in his shoulders was all frustration about how nothing ever changes in South Park. But there’s more to it. Over Kyle or not, buddies or not, Kyle was right. It isn’t fair of him to make Kenny his armchair therapist.

Not on this particular subject.

It makes Kenny feel like he’s back at Park County High, playing spectator while Kyle ran across the football field to hug Stan post-winning touchdown. He spent years on the sidelines, dying inside while Kyle nurtured this unvarnished adulation, this raw, sweet thing for their best friend.

Kenny doesn’t have a lot going for him, but he has dignity. He refuses to go through any of that again.

“You’re right,” Kyle says, in a voice that sounds like he’s swallowed glass. “I’m sorry.”

It’s the, what, tenth apology Kyle’s given him since Kenny first dragged his pasty ass out of bed? The _sorrys_ are getting old, fast.

“Just deal with it,” Kenny snaps, face turned towards the soft, flat plane of Kyle’s belly.

Hesitantly, Kyle cards his fingers into the old gold of Kenny’s hair. “I will.”

Tugging at Kenny’s blanket, he asks, “Can I?”

Kenny inclines his head in something that’s not quite a nod. He’s too comfortable to actually move.

“Have at it.”

Muted gray obscures Kenny’s vision as Kyle pulls the blanket over the both of them. Kenny’s feet are still sticking out in the cold, but it’s not so bad. He listens as Kyle’s breathing slows. He feels his heartrate drop back down to a languid rhythm. Kenny asks, “Is this better?”

“Much.”

In the monochrome of shadows, Kyle’s features are sharp, carved from stone. Kenny can taste the Doritos and orange juice they were sharing earlier on his exhalations. His fingertips move across Kenny’s skull, this lazy, gentle scritch. It’s the closest to heaven Kenny’s felt in a long while. Kenny doesn’t want it to stop.

That doesn’t keep him from inquiring, “Do you know what you’re going to say?”

Kyle’s grip tightens in Kenny’s hair. “No. I’m going to wing it.”

“You hate _winging it_.”

“I hate everything about this.” The head massage resumes, and Kenny melts into it. Kyle continues, “Maybe I should go back to Seattle. I could learn to like syphilis.”

“You’d think doctors would use protection.”

“You’d think doctors wouldn’t bang on the helipad, but you learn a new thing every day.”

“Sounds uncomfortable.”

“Not as much as you’d think.”

They spend the rest of the afternoon there. Trading stories beneath a makeshift pillow fort.

* * *

 

Seven o’clock rolls around, and Kyle has to leave for Raisin’s. Kenny gives him the best pep talk he can muster, which mostly consists of, “Unshrink your balls, Broflovski.”

No one pays him to be a motivational speaker.

Kyle launches himself out into another snowy night, the mountains purple outlines against a dark cerulean sky. His footsteps disappear into the snow moments after he creates them, huge flakes sticking to his blaringly loud coat.

Kenny leans in the doorframe while Kyle vanishes into the flurry, and figures this is it. The end of whatever miserable solidarity Kyle’s found in him this last week. The next time he’ll hear from his best friends, they’ll be a unit. Kyle-and-Stan. Stan-and-Kyle. The way the universe intended.

He makes his way into the kitchen to gather whatever scraps his siblings and parents have left him into something resembling a meal. He finds some limp, cold broccoli in a long-cooled pot on the stove.

And that’s it. There is nothing else.

Not in their pantry, and not in their fridge, which contains a single, lonely Bud. Kenny pops the top off on the counter. He bets there’s still half a jug of orange juice, room temperature, up in his room, too. Fruit, vegetables, and alcohol – the only food groups Kenny needs, tonight.

He grabs the pot of broccoli by the handle and the beer bottle by its neck, carting both up to his room.

Stretched out on his bed, he makes quick work of his makeshift supper. The broccoli was chewy and unsatisfying, and now he’s got a low grumble in his stomach. Kenny ignores it, skimming his online profiles on his cell – he’s got Tinder, obviously, and an account at Sugarbabies Dot Com that gets a few bites.

Kenny’s not sure he’d make it as a kept man, but hey, he’s got ambition.

A text comes up from Kyle while Kenny’s scrutinizing the profile of an older gentleman who wants to pay him a cool thou ever month for friendly companionship. Kenny has no idea why anyone would shell out a thousand bucks for anything less than getting their dick sucked, but he’s considering it.

Kyle’s text reads, _SOS_.

Kenny bites his tongue and types back, _What’s your damage?_

_I need help._

Nope. No. Nonono. Kenny is not marching on down to Raisin’s to bail out the Good Ship Style. He refuses. He tells Kyle as much, typing furiously.

Kyle doesn’t play fair. _Kenny, please?_

It’s the please that does it. Kenny can’t turn Kyle down when talks real pretty-like, and that douchebag damn well knows it.

He downs the last of his beer and starts scouting around for his scarf.

* * *

 

Raisin’s burned down three times in the last five years, but they keep rebuilding. Perseverance is part of their business model. They need it, too, because the entire place is empty tonight, other than Stan and Kyle.

Heads bent close over the table, Stan is smiling while Kyle explains something in jerky, short gestures. It’s probably his story about the resident and the nurse in the pediatric ward. That one gets him really agitated.

They’re picture perfect in the low light. With his strong jawline, curls, and plush lips, Kyle is an ancient Greek sculpture of a boy. Stan’s perfect skin and benign smile would make Botticelli cry. They’re a handsome portrait, a study in intimacy.

The plate glass window beside them is dark, from this far back. Kenny can see himself reflected there, framed between his two best friends. He’s shabbily dressed and not nearly as pretty. But he pastes a wicked smile on his cherubic face and squares his shoulders all the same.

Time to ruin the mood.

“Hey, guys. Fancy meeting you here.”

Stan visibly deflates when Kenny approaches the table.

Kyle, by contrast, bounds to his feet to pull Kenny into his side of the booth. His grip on Kenny’s bicep is iron strong.

“Kenny! Hi!” He hisses, “I’m so glad you came.”

Kenny mutters back, “You’re cutting off my circulation.”

Kyle does not get the message, clinging for dear life.

“Hey,” Stan says flatly.

“You don’t seem happy to see me.”

That flusters him.

“I am,” Stan demurs. “But I’m surprised you don’t have plans. You’re a popular guy.”

“Meh.” Kenny crosses his arms on the tabletop and leans in, with a devilish smirk. “Not that popular.”

A curvy, dark haired waitress delivers an extra menu with a wink and a, “Hey, sexy,” for Kenny, which, yeah, she could have better timing. Kenny doesn’t begrudge her for it, though. Porsche’s been working at Raisin’s for as long as he can remember – her dad owns this franchise. She’s friendly with all their clients, but she and Kenny also know each other in the biblical sense.

They’ve been through the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John together quite a few times.

Stan whistles low. “Have you tapped that?”

Primly, Kenny responds, “A gentleman doesn’t kiss and tell.”

“You told me about Ms. Shapiro, senior year.”

“That was only once.”

“So you’ve tapped that multiple times.” Stan gives Porsche a once over. “ _Nice_.”

Then he remembers he’s annoyed about the intrusion, and his mouth straightens back into a grim, flat line. Kenny knows he’s waiting for some further elaboration, but he needs to sell this. He calls across the restaurant to Porsche that he wants a _basket of fries, loaded_ , and only then does he turn his attention back to his friends.

“Kev’s out with his baby momma, and my ‘rents are at their second home.” He imitates slamming back a shot. “I wanted to call it a night, but…Karen’s got a boyfriend over. There were _noises_.”

Kyle tries to sell it. “Yikes.”

Unfortunately, Kyle is a goody two shoes who barely ever lies. Even that single word – _yikes_ – raises Stan’s suspicions.

“Did you invite him here, Ky? Is he who you were texting before?”

Like the shoddy liar he is, Kyle exclaims, “No! Of course not. Why would you ask that?”

His grip on Kenny’s arm is far past bruising. Shifty bastard.

“I can’t believe you!” Stan explodes. “You blow me off for months, and when you finally, _finally_ reach out, you pull this?”

Aw-kward. Kenny stares out the window, where the flurries are only getting worse. If he gets snowed into fucking Raisins with this assholes, heads are going to roll.

Probably his. The universe has a fucked up sense of humor that way.

Trying to avoid bloodshed, Kenny holds his hand up, palms out, towards Stan. Whoa, whoa, whoa. We’re all friends here. Pretend you like me, Marsh, or my feelings are gonna be hurt.”

“This isn’t your problem, Kenny.” Stan glares at Kyle, who is full on hugging Kenny’s arm like it’s an anchor in the middle of a hurricane. It’s not the Most Helpful thing he could be doing. Kenny decides to glare at him too.

“Kyle made it my problem,” he replies. He’s playing mediator despite himself. “Let’s all take deep breaths.”

Stan might’ve gone along with it if Kyle doesn’t give into an outburst.

“I was avoiding you because- because-“ His eyes dart frantically around Raisin’s. The argument’s already grabbed the attention of Porsche and her sisters. They’re swinging their heads back and forth like they’re watching a tennis match. “You know what you did!”

“I _told_ you, that was a _mistake_.”

“You’re a godawful liar,” retorts the worst liar in the whole stupid town.

Stan shakes his head, obstinate. “And you’re a crap best friend.”

Kyle gasps, offended. “Admit you did it on purpose, and I’ll let Kenny go home.”

Kenny’s not going anywhere until Porsche brings his fries, but now is probably not the time to voice that.

“Fine!” Stan yells. “It wasn’t a mistake! I wanted you to see it.”

Softer, Stan adds, “I wanted you.”

“You thirsty motherfucker,” Kenny says wondrously. “Bold. Very bold.”

“God, shut up, Kenny.” Stan stares daggers at him and no one brings him fries.

Kyle doesn’t even dignify any of it, caught up in the real heart of the matter. “What, and _telling_ me would have hurt you? Rather than man up, you send me your- your – veiny love tree?”

Kenny actually chokes on his laughter. He has to steal Kyle’s water so he can stop hacking, mumbling, _veiny love tree_ under his breath. It doesn’t endear him to his present company.

“I got nervous,” Stan confesses, and this is quickly crossing the border to way too private for Kenny. He attempts to make eye contact with Porsche, pleading for his fries.

“Dude, we’ve been friends since kindergarten. I would’ve understood,” Kyle replies, with the empathy of someone who’d been in Stan’s shoes.

Kenny does not want to be around when that little admission makes it onto the table. He calls, “Porsche!”

“Kyle,” Stan murmurs, gentling. The way he says Kyle’s name is low and it’s dear and it’s not something Kenny can handle. He hates himself for answering Kyle’s texts. He hates that he has to bear witness to the culmination of their years of yearning.

He hates Kyle, for putting him in this position.

“I didn’t know for the longest time how I felt about you,” Stan admits. “But you’re it for me. I don’t want to marry Bebe. I want you. It’s always been you, man.”

That’s sweet.

Kenny wants to puke.  

Screw the fries. He tries to free his arm up from Kyle’s claws, intent on making a quick escape. To Kenny’s relief, Kyle releases him, but it’s a short lived win. Kyle wraps his arm around Kenny’s shoulders and puts on the biggest, fakest grin that anyone this side of the Rockies has ever seen.

Kenny opens his mouth to negotiate his immediate release. But he sort of loses that train of thought when Kyle announces, “I wish I could tell you I feel the same way, but Stan. You’re too late. You waited too long.”

“Please don’t say that,” Stan begs, dark blue eyes anguished. “We can make this work.”

Kenny hates to see one of his best friends in pain, even if this whole situation calls up a lot of bad memories for him. Plus, he’s intensely uncomfortable, and Kyle is just not letting go.

Outside the window, the snow is thickening on the ground, blocking Kenny’s quick exit.

Kyle says, “We can’t, Stan. I’m already taken. See, Kenny and I are dating.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “We just got you back, Brof. I’m not ready to give you up.” His words are loud in the snowy hush, and entirely too honest. “None of us are. Just ‘cause something is easy doesn’t mean it’s the right move.”
> 
> He keeps doing this, flexing this unused, forgotten part of himself.
> 
> The part that adored Kyle.

“What. The hell,” Kenny intones, popping a fry into his mouth, and chewing. Angrily. “Was that?”

“Don’t hate me.” Kyle is gazing past him, to the black and white landscape outside. Somewhere in that mess, Stan has retreated to his fancy car, with its fancy heated seats and its fancy lack of Kyle.

“Oh, we’re long past hate.” Kenny points a fry at Kyle’s face. “I’m contemplating murder.”

Weakly, Kyle says, “I didn’t know what to tell him.”

“How about, hmm, anything other than that? I’m not a _prop_ , Jesus, Kyle. You can’t use me this way!”

“It’s temporary. Until I figure out- a better solution.”

“Do you even get how cruel that was? To me and to Stan?”

Kyle bites his lower lip. “I thought you said you were over me.”

“I am. That doesn’t mean I want to fake-date you and really test that theory out!”

“Kenny, I-“

“Don’t,” Kenny instructs darkly. “Don’t say you’re sorry. That word is beginning to lose all meaning with you, dude.”

Miserable, Kyle nods. “I don’t want to be a homewrecker.”

“That’s not on you. That’s on Stan. If he doesn’t love Bebe the way she deserves, then he shouldn’t be with her.”

Personally, Kenny pities the day Stan tries. Bebe supposedly sells handmade jewelry on Etsy for income, but she’s raking in more cash than Token Black, and he’s a gynecologist. Cartman’s cooked up a theory that she’s an international arms dealer, and it would be completely ridiculous if literally everything about Bebe didn’t back that theory up.

She has bodyguards now. Big, tough bodyguards.

Stan’s got his work cut out for him if he actually wants to call the engagement off.

He could probably run to Wendy for help. Even doing public service, she’s one hell of a scary broad herself.

Kenny shakes his head, because he doesn’t care what Stan does, as long as he leaves Kenny out of it. He wants to hear about stories like these over a cold beer and a football game at the Marsh enclave, not live right in the middle of them.

“You need to tell him that you got spooked, and we’re _not_ dating.”

“You’re right. Obviously, you’re right,” Kyle agrees, fidgeting in the booth beside Kenny. “I’ll tell him I couldn’t make a decision yet. Or…what if I, uh, didn’t do that?”

“What’s the alternative, Kyle? We pretend we’re super in love? Parade it around town?”

Kyle perks up. “Why not? Why can’t we pretend, until I have a real answer for Stan?”

“That’s completely untenable and you know it. How does it end? After we go on a few dates? Attend Stan’s wedding together? Buy a house and get a dog?” Kyle chooses to stay quiet, and Kenny rambles on, “C’mon, Kyle. When would our expiration date be? When would you know if you love Stan back or not?”

“I don’t know how to respond to that.”

“Because this is a slipshod plan, and you know it!”

“You’re not wrong.” Kyle gives him a wry smile then, slightly crooked, like the ones in the photos in his foyer. “My mouth moved before my brain did.”

“Damn straight. Besides, no one in this town would buy that you were into me.” There’s a bitter edge to Kenny’s words that sours the taste of the fry he’s chewing on. He swallows, and it goes down like a rock.

Kyle senses the turn towards melancholy. He puts his hand on Kenny’s shoulder and says, “Stan did.”

It’s true. Stan stormed out of Raisin’s like the hounds of hell were on his tail. He bought the Kenny-and-Kyle story hook, line, and sinker.

That doesn’t change the facts. “It’s a bad idea, Kyle.”

Kyle’s face falls. He slumps back in the booth with an audible huff. “Yeah, no, you’re right. It was dumb of me to ask.”

Kenny eats another fry and doesn’t answer. It _was_ dumb of him to ask. But he inches his plate towards Kyle’s side of the table. A peace offering.

Kyle grins. All teeth. He picks at a fry and says, “In retrospect, I’ve made a lot of bad decisions lately.”

“We can’t all be perfect.” Kenny bats his eyelashes at Porsche as she refills their water glasses. “Other than me, I mean.”

Porsche titters and walks away, her backside swaying. Kyle snorts and keels to the right, bumping his shoulder against Kenny’s. “Thanks for putting up with us mere mortals.”

“My pleasure, darlin’.” Kenny points to the last fry on the plate. “You going to eat that?”

* * *

 

Kenny’s resolved that all’s well that ends well.

Kyle’s left his zany idea in the rearview mirror, and now Kenny can move on with his life, drama free. Or as drama free as it ever gets around these parts.

His shift at the Kum & Go passes quickly, with him thumbing alternately through a back issue of Penthouse and another one of Christophe’s castoffs. The Master and Margarita, this time.

The whole plot revolves around the devil, which reminds Kenny that it’s been six months since he last died. That can’t last. A reckoning’s coming his way, and soon.

Craig arrives after Kenny’s switched back to porn, examining a perfect rack on a sweet-faced Korean girl.

“You need new hobbies, McCormick.”

“I like this one.” Kenny rolls the magazine in his hands, using as a spyglass to peer at Craig through. “You’re early.”

“I needed extra time to walk across the tundra. It’s colder than a witch’s tit out there.”

Kenny’s grin turns lewd. “Mmm. Titties.”

“How are you horny like, 24/7? At some point, doesn’t being hard all the time hurt?”

“Not yet, honey bun, but I’ll tell you if the agony gets too much and I need help with my sweet, sweet release.”

Craig stops short in the midst of hanging up his jacket. Flatly, he says, “I want you to know that I loathe you.”

Asshat for a penny, asshat for a pound, Kenny decides. “How is Tweek today?”

“Nosy! God, you’re so nosy.”

“I prefer to say I’m invested in my friend’s lives.”

Craig darts around the tiny glass cubicle, removing his hat and turning up the space heater Kenny’s resting his ankles on. “For your information, I haven’t texted him today.”

Kenny marvels at this act of willpower. “What’s up with the change of heart?”

Craig sags back against the counter ledge, folding his arms across his chest. He frowns down at the dirty station floor, eyelashes dark spiders against his sallow skin. “It’s been two years.”

“You noticed.”

“Tweek-“ Craig’s voice splinters across Tweek’s name, dropping in pitch. “Tweek and I’ve been together since fourth grade. I thought we were ride or die.”

Kenny did too, once. They were every romancey superlative in every yearbook he owned. The heart is such a fickle bitch.

Craig says, “I can’t force Tweek to respect our history. I don’t want to. So. _I_ blocked _him_.”

“Look at you with the personal growth. Proud of you, buddy.”

“Shucks.” Craig hops up onto the counter, dangling his legs over the side. “Don’t go all Hallmark on me, Kenny.”

Kenny’s got a witty retort prepped, but it’s cut off by the hee-haw of the front door. Craig scoots back off the counter, because the owner gets in real snits about customers seeing that, and plucks Kenny’s phone deftly from his pocket. “You handle this.”

Kenny doesn’t ask what Craig’s planning to do. It wouldn’t be the first time he browsed Kenny’s Sugarbabies Dot Com account.

“Let me know if I’ve got any new hits,” Kenny agrees, switching his attention over to… _Stan_.

He’s a lot more disheveled than the night before, dark suit rumpled in a way the butt-hugging jeans he’d worn to meet Kyle hadn’t been. His collar is loose, necktie askew, all of it visible beneath an undone parka. Stan’s dark hair, tucked into a beanie, looks greasy and unwashed.

Kenny hasn’t seen him this wrecked since Wendy dumped him. He should tell her that, he thinks, in his weekly activity report.

“Are you really dating Kyle?”

Stan isn’t here to pull his punches, apparently. Craig nearly drops Kenny’s phone at the news. Kenny scowls at him, like _you break it, you buy it_.

“Stan,” Kenny tries.

“Don’t _Stan_ me. How could you? You know that I- How I- you _know_.” He infuses his last work with so much emphasis and feeling that Kenny actually feels guilty.

Because yeah, he suspected. He’s not oblivious, and Stan has a picture of him and Kyle as his phone’s wallpaper and as his lock screen. But suspecting isn’t the same thing as certainty.

“Look, man, I-“

Stan won’t even let him get a word in edgewise. Eyes flashing cerulean and fierce, he reaches into the glass cage and fists the front of Kenny’s shirt. “Save it. You don’t deserve him, Kenny. You’re the town slut and he’s- He’s too good for you. He’ll see that, eventually.”

“Harsh,” Craig intones, scrolling through Kenny’s phone.

Stan says, “You don’t even deserve to breathe the same air as him.” 

Something inside Kenny snaps.

He wraps his hands around the lapels of Stan’s suit and pulls right back, a tug of war that has sharp edges digging into their hips. He growls, “Dude, _no_. You don’t get to say that to me. You’re devastated over Kyle. Okay. That sucks. But you’re my friend too. You don’t get to get up in my face and tell me I’m worthless. Not after everything we’ve been through.”

Stan’s grip goes slack, the words permeating his brain. “Kenny-“

“Get the fuck out,” Kenny orders, dropping his hands. He was up on his tippy toes while Stan was manhandling him, but now he drops back on his heels. He snarls, “Go think about what you’ve done.”

For the second time in a week, Stan flees the gas station like an undead horde is trying to make a snack out of his sweet little ass. Kenny watches him go with narrow eyes.

Tactless as ever, Craig ventures, “Are you and Broflovski really bumping uglies?”

Kenny’s heart somersaults beneath his sternum, rage fueling his thoughts. “I need to get out of here.”

“Sure thing, man.” Craig hands back Kenny’s phone. “No new bites. Just a fuckload of dick pics.”

Kenny nods and tucks his cell into his back pocket.

* * *

 

Kenny pounds on Kyle’s back door until his fist is raw and chapped with cold.

There aren’t any cars in the driveway, and Ike’s probably out with friends. It’s winter break at the university, which means every college-aged kid in town is trying to get their fill of all that South Park has to offer before they head back to normalcy.

But Kyle’s home. He’s got to be. He’s only ducked out of his fortress to hang with Kenny and Stan so far, and Kenny would bet a kidney that those two lovebirds haven’t spoken a word to each other since the previous night.

Stan’s not great at grudges, but in this instance, it seems like he’s making a real special effort.

Kenny keeps pounding, and after an eternity, the door swings back. Kyle’s got his annoyed face on, the only visible part of him, seeing as he’s burritoed in his comforter from neck to toe. “No solicitors! Oh. Kenny. It’s you.”

Kenny barges past him, into the foyer. He stomps snow off his boots while Kyle pads after him, feet bare. “Sorry I took so long. I was facetiming with Fatass. He’s in Kuala Lumpur now.”

“Doing what?”

“It’s better not to ask. What’s going on?”

“Little bit of this. Little bit of that. You got any beer?”

“My parents are more wine people…”

“Perfect. Lead the way.” Kenny follows Kyle into the kitchen, where he brings out a bottle of Central Valley Pinot Noir and a corkscrew in the shape of a velociraptor. They sit in stiff-backed dining room chairs while twists the cork out of the wine bottle with practiced ease. He pours Kenny a healthy serving. “You know it’s 3 pm, right?”

“It’s five o clock somewhere,” Kenny says, because his mom always uses that as an excuse for day drinking. “Stan stopped by the Kum & Go.”

“He didn’t,” Kyle gasps. When it’s clear Kenny’s not going to say _j/k, I’m pulling your leg_ , he pours himself a glass of wine too.  

“Yeah.” Curtly, Kenny adds, “He was a real dick about it.”

“What did he want?”

“To give me shit about dating you. He told me I didn’t deserve you.”

Kyle groans. “What an utter bastard.”

“Exactly. In light of Stan being a complete dickwad, I’ve reevaluated.” Kenny puts his hand on Kyle’s knee, full of meaning. “Let’s do this.”

Kyle zeroes in on Kenny’s hand. “Do…what?”

“Date. Screw with Stan’s head.” Kenny does not say, _prove I’m good enough_ , but it’s at the top of his list.

“I thought you didn’t want to.”

“I didn’t. Now I do.” Kenny throws back the rest of his wine and holds his glass out for another pour. Kyle obliges, chewing on the inside of his cheek, clearly pondering whether this is in any way a serviceable course of action.

“Last night, I said that impulsively. I don’t want to hurt Stan. He’s my best friend.”

“He’s a douchebag.”

“Yeah, he is,” Kyle replies fondly.

Kenny doesn’t have time for this mushy crap. He’s ticked off, and in the mood for revenge. “Look. Are you going to turn around and tell Stan you lied? That you made up a boyfriend because you couldn’t commit to loving him or not? Don’t you think that’s going to suck major balls for him?”

Kyle shifts uncomfortably.

“Besides, if you tell him now, he’s going to expect a decision. Choose him, or close that avenue off forever. Are you ready to do either of those things?” Kenny asks. It’s an unfair question. He’s perfectly aware that Kyle isn’t, and he’s weaponizing that doubt against him. “This way, you have an out. If you decide Stan’s the one, we can break it off. You can fall into his arms in time to stop the wedding bells. If you decide he’s not, no harm, no foul. Stan will never know we were faking it to spare his feelings. Kyle, this is the charitable thing to do.”

Shrewdly, Kyle retorts, “You’re only saying that because you want to stick it to Stan.”

“Yes. One hundred percent, I really, really do.” Kenny beams as wide as he can, devil-may-care and verging on tipsy. “But don’t let my motives color your judgment. Unless they’re compelling you to say yes, in which case, join me on the petty train. Choo choo!”

“You’re ridiculous.” Kyle laughs and claps Kenny on the shoulder. “Do you think we can pull it off?”

“It’s a relationship, not a heist. Between the two of us, I think we can manage a few fake dates.”

“How do you know it’s only a few?” Kyle queries, paraphrasing Kenny from the night before. “When is the gig up?”

“Let’s give it a month,” Kenny says, twirling his wine around in its glass, watching it sparkle under the cheerful kitchen lights. “Revisit the idea then.”

If Kenny is honest with himself, he doesn’t plan on the two of them lasting that long.

Kyle's going to choose Stan, eventually. Kyle always chooses Stan.

“Is a month long enough?” Kyle asks. 

“You know me, Broflovski. Always a fan of the easy out.”

It’s true. Kenny’s been known to fling himself in front of the occasional speeding car to escape a relationship. Kyle snorts. “And are there rules?”

“Rules?”

“Like, we can hold hands, but we can’t…I don’t know?”

“Kiss?” Kenny suggests. The very last thing he wants in the entire world is kiss Kyle.

“We have to kiss!” Kyle objects with a frown. “Otherwise, why are we even dating?”

“We’re not.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Fine. But no tongue.”

Kyle settles back in his chair, the lines between his eyebrows smoothing. He shoves a fistful of curls off his forehead, smug as all get out, and pastes on a cocky grin. “I’m okay with that.”

* * *

 

Their first official date as a fake-couple verges on pathetic.

In that it’s not a date, because those are romantic, between couples, and usually don’t involve rental shoes.

“This is how you get Athlete’s Foot,” Kyle tells Kenny, face screwed into an expression of intense disgust. Kenny ignores him, tying the laces on his blue and yellow bowling shoes with a molasses-slow smirk. “Now, now, sweetums. You can disinfect me later.”

He’s laying it on thick, doing his best to look at Kyle the way he’d look at a girl, without experiencing any of the accompanying emotions.

It’s not that hard – Kenny’s a practiced liar.

Kyle, though. He’s a ball of nervous energy, strung tight enough to burst. He fusses with the front of his hoodie. “Please don’t call me sweetums.”

Doesn’t hurt that Stan is here, in the lane opposite them. He looks like sex on a stick tonight, in slim black slacks and a button down dotted with tiny flamingoes, his dark hair slicked back like a rockabilly god.

Normally he wears gym shorts, so Kenny’s betting he guessed Kyle would be in residence. Sneaky fuck.

Stan and Kenny are part of the same bowling team – the Split Personalities – along with Bebe, Craig, and Token. They’re less of a team and more of a group that gets together once a month to throw balls really hard at shit, but they gave themselves a name anyway. Because it was funny, and because who is stupid enough to be on an actual bowling team?

They’ve got a full house this evening, complete with cheerleaders. Butters and Clyde are sitting at the bowling alley’s bar top, Butters with a diet soda clutched in both hands. Clyde’s got a beer, which Kyle eyes appreciatively. “I’m parched.”

“Drink responsibly,” Kenny throws back, feeling up one of the balls on the rack behind him.

Everyone else has their own, spit-shiny and untouched by other disgusting hands. Kenny doesn’t have that kind of cash, so he alternates every week. This time, he chooses a scratched red ball that has something close to the perfect heft.

Kyle taps him on the shoulder, bouncing on his toes. He still toying with his hoodie strings, but he’s a pretty sight in butt-hugging jeans. Kenny glances back, giving him an automatic, appreciative once over. “I thought you left? Don’t you have a beer and a fickle heart to nurse, _sweetums_?”

Kyle’s mouth drops open, like he’s going to chastise Kenny for being a tool.

But he doesn’t. He tilts his head close to Kenny’s and whispers, “Demolish ‘em all.”

Kenny doesn’t expect it, or the toothy smile he gets before Kyle saunters over to the bar, ass swinging. He shakes his head.

That kid is full of surprises.

Token’s on deck, proceeded by Bebe and Craig. Bebe is gearing up by shaking her assets to a nineties hit. She’s wearing skin tight jeans with a low cut top. Everything is jiggling nicely. Kenny is torn between watching her move and avoiding the wretched glare Stan keeps pointing his way.

He isn’t into masochism, so he chooses the best available alternative. He murmurs low and sweet to Craig, “Did you invite Clyde?”

Craig makes a _hmm_ noise under his breath, polishing the curve of his blue ball with a soft cloth. It gleams beneath the alley lamps. “He said he really likes bowling as a competitive sport.”

No one has ever said that in the history of ever.

“He wants in your pants, dude, I’m telling you. _Bad_.”

Craig scowls. “Can’t a man just like bowling around here?”

“Bowling _and_ gas station taquitos? Nah. Too much coincidence.”

Craig ignores him.

Token finishes his turn with a moderately good score. He bows for his appreciative audience (Butters, who is clapping wildly) and then Bebe waltzes up to take her turn. She bowls a strike. She is scary good at bowling, along with arms deals and probably other delights, like assassination or corporate espionage, so this is not a surprise.

Beaming, she lopes over to Stan and throws herself into his arms, shrieking, “Did you see that?”

Stan manages to balance all of her body weight – her long, sexy legs wrapped around his hips – and still smooth a hand over her thick blonde curls.

It’s an impressive feat of strength, all rippling biceps and a solid core on Stan’s part. Kenny wonders if he’s still taking pilates.

“Sure did.” He sounds affectionate, open.

Not at all like he’s pining over another dude’s peen.

Bebe plants a huge, whopping kiss on Stan’s mouth, and he surges up to meet it. He’s acting like she’s all he ever wanted. Hypocrite.

At the bar, Kyle is pale. He’s shrinking into his sweatshirt.

Kenny swallows and waits his turn.

Craig throws a gutter ball because Clyde cheers his name a little too vigorously. Cheeks burning apple red, he storms back to his yellow plastic chair in a full blown snit.

Kenny fingers his ball. He deliberates. But he doesn’t let himself dwell on it too long, calling to Kyle, “Aren’t you going to wish me luck, babe?”

Stan’s hands stall out mid-grope on Bebe’s backside, body going rigid. A muscle jumps in his jaw, and Kenny floods with satisfaction.

It doesn’t last, though. Kyle’s got that same deer-in-headlights expression he’s been wearing on and off since he returned from Washington, and Kenny is waiting for him to muck everything up. But Kyle’s smart, if nothing else. He conquers his trauma, quick, swiveling on his barstool and blowing Kenny a kiss.

Kenny hams it up, reaching out a hand to grab the invisible thing. He pantomimes tucking it away into his pocket for safekeeping.

Out of the corner of his eye, he can see the stricken grimace that’s overtaken Stan’s face. He refuses to feel ways about that. He only hits three pins, but score one for Team Fakeout.

When he sits back down, Token throws himself in the chair next to him. It was reserved for Craig’s huge temper tantrum, which is taking up a grand total of three seats, but whatever, if he wants to risk life and limb, that’s on him.

Token says, “When I told you to do something about Kyle, I didn’t mean stick your tongue in his mouth.”

Kenny bites the inside of his cheek. “What can I say? I exceed expectations.”

“For sure. Gold star.” Token watches Stan bowl his turn. It involves a lot of posturing and fancy footwork. Kenny snorts. “I always thought Kyle and Stan were endgame.”

Kenny bites harder. He tastes blood.

“No offense,” Token adds in a rush.

“None taken.” He means it, too, shoulders relaxing. Token’s a good guy. He always has been. “They were the fairytale, right?”

“Tweek and I were the fairytale,” Craig says, sulking. He crosses his arms across his sternum and grunts, “Kyle and Stan are the butt-faced runners up.”

“You don’t sound bitter at all, buddy,” Token tells him, squeezing his shoulder good-naturedly. Craig wrinkles his nose. “Maybe it’s time to try getting out there. Dating.”

“You have options,” Kenny adds. “Outside of being a miserable bastard.”

Token cocks an eyebrow. “Do tell?”

“Don’t you fucking-“

Kenny blurts, “Donovan’s got it bad for Tucker.”

“No shit?” Immediately, Token’s attention darts over to the bar, where Clyde is knocking his beer bottle against Kyle’s. Butters is trying to get in on their conversation, in his bumbling, sweet way. Neither of them are paying him any lip service. “That asshole hasn’t said a word to me. You into that, Craig?”

“No.” He glares at Kenny. “Stop helping.”

“You haven’t even thought about it,” Kenny accuses, reaching across Token to flick Craig in the arm. “You need the help.”

Craig is full on pouting, now. “What, you’d get with Clyde?”

“Sure.” Kenny shrugs.

It’s weird admitting he finds one of their old crew attractive, but as far as they know, he’s banging Kyle on the reg. His heterosexuality is officially laid to rest.

“You’re such a fucking whore.” Craig says it like it’s almost a compliment, which is fine, because Kenny takes it as one. Wistfully, he tacks on, “It’s not as easy for me.”

“Dunno, I think Clyde’s willing to be very, very easy.”

Token gags. “Best friend. He’s my best friend, guys.”

“Not what I meant!” Craig objects, flailing.

Stan calls Token up to bowl, which should effectively put a pause in their conversation. Except for how it doesn’t. Kenny hisses at Craig, “So what did you mean?”

Craig rolls his eyes upwards, towards the electric hum of the alley lights. He’s blushing again, an ugly shade of pink that’s creeping down his neck. “Why the hell should I tell you?”

“Because you know I’m going to spend the rest of tonight guessing.”

Craig does a really good job of looking disgusted with himself. “Fine. I’ve never been with anyone other than Tweek.”

Kenny doesn’t get it at first. “Yeah. So?”

“So.” Craig makes a rude gesture. “I wouldn’t even know how, with anyone else…”

“Oh. _Ohhhh_.” Kenny’s mouth twists. “I bet Clyde would be gentle.”

Token chooses that moment to return with another mediocre score under his belt, much to his apparent regret. “Really? This is what we’re talking about?”

“Do you think Clyde would be good in the sack?”

“Agh, no, why would you ask me that? Best friend,” Token repeats emphatically. “That’s like asking you how Ky- wait. Bad example. That’s like asking you whether Stan can rock a blow job.”

Kenny examines Stan’s mouth from afar. “He’d be adequate.”

“You have problems,” Craig informs him.

Kenny grins. “I’m just saying, it’s not like you’re a virgin. You have to get back on that horse sometime.”

“This is getting worse and worse,” Token says to no one in particular.

He doesn’t get up, though.

“First of all, you’re delusional. Clyde isn’t into me,” Craig jabs Kenny in the knee. Token’s mouth forms a tiny moue of disbelief, but he wisely keeps his mouth shut. “Second of all, is there something like the opposite of Viagra? Because you need that.”

Token nods his categorical agreement so hard Kenny’s worried his head might fall off.

“Yo, Craig! You’re up.” Stan jogs up to them, studiously avoiding Kenny’s eyes. “What are you guys talking about?”

“Girl talk.” Kenny bats his lashes.

Stan’s mouth sets into a thin, grim line. “You don’t have to tell me.”

He thinks they’re talking about Kyle. Good.

“Nothing important, Marsh.” Craig climbs to his feet, firmly shutting down the subject. “Excuse me, boys. I have some ass to kick.”

He rolls another gutter ball.

* * *

 

At one point during their second game, Kyle brings Kenny an ice cold pilsner.

“Weaksauce,” Kenny tells him, accepting all the same. “I know they have better shit up there.”

“It’s what I’m drinking,” Kyle replies, lifting one shoulder in apology. “I have crap taste.”

“I’ve read the fake boyfriend handbook. I know better than to confirm or deny that.”

Kyle snorts. “Glad to see you’re taking your duty seriously.”

Kenny snickers at the word duty.

“You are a child,” Kyle tells him.

The crash of pins behind them alerts everyone that Bebe has rolled yet another strike. She’s performing a victory dance that is semi-indecent for a grown ass woman, a combination of cheerleading moves from Park Country High’s Varsity Squad and a strip club groove. Kenny appreciates her talent.

Kyle pokes his forehead. “If you keep staring at her tits, no one’s going to believe you’re getting some from me.”

“Why not?” Kenny asks, genuinely confused.

“You might’ve noticed, I don’t have any.”

“You’ve got your own charms.” Kenny shoves his hair out of his face with one hand, leaning his chin on his other. “I keep a diverse portfolio.”

“That’s…the most diplomatic phrasing I’ve ever heard for _sleeping with anything that moves_ , excellent work.”

Kenny beams, bright and happy. “Does that mean I’m ready to join the foreign service?”

He’s joking. Obviously, he’s joking. That’s why he’s so put out when Kyle replies, “Kenny, I honestly believe you can do anything you put your mind to.”

It’s not fair. Kyle always does this. Believes in people, when they’ve done nothing to deserve it.

It’s why Kenny fell for him in high school, and it’s a _lie_. Back then, he thought Kenny would get into college. He thought Kenny would make something of his life. Kenny vividly recalls sitting side by side in the library, reaping Kyle’s assistance as he put together university applications.

Much good that did.

He says, “You overestimate me. By the by, plan’s working. Our man Stan nearly pissed his pants when you blew me that kiss.”

“You don’t need to wallow in his pain, dude.”

“Mm, he called me the town slut, Kyle. I think I do.”

Kyle studies him. “You’ve been called worse.”

“That doesn’t give Stan license to throw salt in the wounds.” Kenny takes a swig of his beer, weak as fuck, but it gives his mouth something to do. “He’s supposed to be my friend.”

“You’re right,” Kyle decides, even though he looks like he’d love to dig deeper into it. He’s got his own agenda, and Kenny forgiving Stan doesn’t align with it. He takes a deep breath and announces, “And we’ve got work to do. Ready or not.”

Kenny doesn’t even have time to brace himself.

Kyle drops a kiss on his mouth, sweet and chaste and, above all, brief.

Without meaning to, Kenny chases his mouth when he pulls away. He spent half his teens daydreaming about his and Kyle’s first kiss. It was never this unsatisfying, and he’s got half a mind to pull a replay, to grab Kyle by the curve of his cheek and draw him down into something real.

But that’s the crux of the problem – this isn’t real. Kenny’s got nothing to prove. He presses the tip of his tongue against one pointed incisor, biting down. The sting is nothing compared to the dull thud in his chest.

Kyle brushes their noses together, a parody of affection. He chuckles lowly, teasing, “Don’t you fall in love with me.”

Kenny wants to tell him that it’s not funny. It’s cruel. Before he gets the chance, Kyle warns, “Stan’s watching us.”

That’s the point, isn’t it?

He loops an arm around Kyle’s waist, tugging him until he topples into Kenny’s lap. He nuzzles Kyle’s ear, tamping down hard on the instinct to nip. Performance art. That’s all this is.

Kyle makes a small, hurt noise. “Dude, that tickles!”

“You’re such a pussy,” Kenny breathes against his skin, his laughter low and close.

“I am not! I-“

Kyle doesn’t get the opportunity to explain what he is.

“Kyle? What the actual fuck?” Ike’s voice is as high as it’s ever been, least since his balls dropped, and damn.

There goes their easy out.

“I didn’t know you were gay,” Ike accuses.

Kenny, that is. He appears supremely unsurprised that Kyle is perched on another man’s knee.

“I didn’t know you bowled,” Kenny counters lazily. The long wooden lanes gleam behind Ike’s shoulders, incongruous in comparison to the dark, angry twist of his mouth. “Lame.”

“You’re here too!” Then, unable to let it slide, Ike insists, “You can’t be gay! You’re a legend at Park County! You slept with my sophomore English Lit prof!”

“Mrs. Sommers?” Kyle asks, scandalized. “You told me she was just tutoring you!”

“In love.” Kenny waggles his eyebrows at Kyle. He adds airily, “It was one time.”

He’s trying to dismiss all that outrage with a wave of his hand, before Kyle thinks to ask whether that’s how Kenny passed AP English. Turning his attention back to Ike, Kenny says, “My sexuality’s a Swiss Army Knife, kid. I’ve got layers.”

“I don’t think pervert is a layer, Kenny,” Kyle bitches.

Kenny squeezes Kyle’s ass. Because he’s vindictive, because he wants to, and because it’s fun to see him yelp and jump to his feet.

Ike flicks his eyes upwards in irritation. “I can’t believe you got your gay all over Kenny fucking McCormick, Kyle. Way to debase a myth.”

“Language,” Kyle reprimands, face bright red. Kenny notes that they have an attentive audience – not only Stan’s shrewd cobalt gaze, but half the bowling alley. That includes Ike’s group of friends, a few gangly college kids who are watching with open interest. “Can you fuck off now?”

Ike frowns, hurt. For all the crap he’s giving Kyle right now, he idolizes his big brother. Always has, always will. “I’m telling mom.”

“Ike!”

“I’m telling mom,” Ike reiterates, stomping his foot.

Kenny sighs. He meets Stan’s simmering dirty look over Ike’s head, flat and level. Figures.

Payback never goes as planned.

* * *

 

Sheila forces them to come to dinner three days after the bowling incident.

Kyle spends the days leading up to it giving Kenny a primer on anything he ever could possibly want, or not want, to know about his pretend-boyfriend. He camps out on the floor of the Kum & Go, while Kenny works, rehearsing acceptable answers to any and all questions a Jewish mother might have for her son’s first boyfriend.

“Are you sure she didn’t know you were gay? Ike was not, uh, startled by the news.”

Kyle winces. “I dated. In college. Ike came to stay with me a few times.”

“Huh. And he didn’t force them to sit through an interrogation session?”

“You’re the lucky grand prize winner.”

“Fantastic.” Kenny purses his lips and helps a customer purchase twenty dollars of regular on pump numero uno. Once the lady scurries out into the cold, to the safety of her sedan, he says, “She had to find out sometime, right?”

“Sure. But I was hoping sometime would be a few years off, yet.”

“Understandable. Hey, it’s not like she’s going to water board us. Is she making that chicken dish you used to like?”

“I haven’t asked.”

“Could you?” Kenny widens his smile, all earnest anticipation. “I have naughty dreams about that shit.”

“Please, don’t ever elaborate.”

“You’re a real killjoy.” Kenny’s phone strikes up a steady buzz, while the lady fiddles with the pump like she can’t quite figure out what to do. He notes that she has Jersey plates. “Hey, can you grab that? I’ve got to do my civic duty for the day.”

“You want me to answer your phone?”

“It’s Wendy,” Kenny replies, because it’s almost always Wendy. His family never calls, Cartman scamming the good citizens of Malaysia, Craig likes to harass him in person, and Kenny and Stan aren’t on speaking terms. Who else would it be?

“Wendy?” Kyle gulps. “Are you sure I should-“

Kenny’s already out the door, intent on teaching the Jerseyite how to work a gas pump. He spends ten minutes patiently going through the motions while she thanks him, profusely. By the time he makes it back inside, his fingers and cheeks are numb.

Kyle’s on his stool, holding the phone a few inches from his face. Wendy is mid-tirade, audible even without speaker phone. “-can you jerk Stan around like this? He’s never been anything but kind to you, he’s your _friend_ , Kyle-“

Deftly, Kenny lets himself back into the cubby and plucks the phone from Kyle’s fingers. “Wendy? Yeah, hey. Is there a problem?”

“Kyle told me he hasn’t visited Stan once since he got home!”

Kenny thought it might be something like that. Wendy has that protective lioness thing down pat, when it comes to Stan.

It’s all very sweet, if you ignore the stalkery aspect of her personality.

“Kyle’s been going through some stuff,” Kenny explains in his mildest voice. “And Stan’s really busy with wedding planning-“

Wendy makes a rude noise. “Please. Stan hasn’t lifted a finger for that wedding. Bebe’s up to her ears in arrangements.”

That’s right, Kenny recalls. Wendy’s going to be Bebe’s maid of honor. What a wacky little triangle they’ve got going there.

She says, “Stan’s under a lot of pressure right now. I think he’d really appreciate getting some friend time in. Can you tell Kyle that for me?”

Kenny gives Kyle a thumbs up, and mouths, “Didja hear that?”

Kyle nods, fearfully.

“He heard you, Wendy. We’ll try to plan a get together.”

Pacified, she says, “Okay. Sorry I yelled. I only want to make sure that he’s happy. You understand that, right?”

Kenny does. Which is why he isn’t mentioning his deal with Kyle, or telling her that it’ll be a cold day in hell before he, Kyle, and Stan get some quality bro-time in at the moment. Wendy is halfway across the country, and what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her. “Good talking to you, Testaburger.”

“Wait! Have you spoken with Eric?”

“Few days back.” Kenny scratches his cheek. “I didn’t know you two were civil again?”

Wendy and Cartman dated at one point in college, between rounds of the Wendy and Stan show. Their breakup was quite possibly the most terrifying period of instability the developed world had ever seen. Stolen nuclear codes were involved. It was a real relief when Wendy got back on the Marsh-carousel.

“We’re not. But he keeps drunk dialing me from a blocked number. Can you tell him to quit it? _Or else_.” The threat in her voice is weighty.

Kenny gulps, imagining an ICBM aimed directly at his house. “Sure, Wendy. I’ll pass that along.”

“Spec-tacular! Thanks! Kisses to you and Kyle.” She hangs up before Kenny can go back on his promise.

Like he would. He tells Kyle, “Next time Cartman rings, we need to have an intervention.”

Kyle turns a sickly shade of green. “Is this about him and Wendy?”

Kenny nods gravely.

“I’ll loop you in on our next chat. You’d think he knew better by now.” Kyle scoots off the chair and back onto the floor, legs crossed. “Wendy always did make him lose his fucking mind. Love is so weird.”

“Concur,” Kenny says. “Have you ever been in it? With anyone other than Stan?”

It’s a moronic, masochistic question. Kenny always did like playing Devil’s advocate.

Especially with his own stupid heart.

Kyle shrugs, examining his nails a touch too carefully. “Never had the time.”

There’s more to it than that. Commitment issues that Kyle’s always struggled with, and a deep, abiding fear of rejection. Kenny accepts the answer for what it is and moves on. “So what made you fall for me? Your mom’s gonna ask.”

“What’s not to like?” Kyle props his elbows on his knees and beams up at Kenny with practiced adoration. “Looks, wit, and brains.”

“Don’t forget a big dick.”

“I’m not telling my mom that.”

Self-deprecating, Kenny informs him, “She’s not going to buy the brains bit.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean.” Kenny fiddles with the keys to cash register, twisting them back and forth. “You’re an MD. I’m…” He gestures grandly around the Kum & Go, concluding, “Not good enough.”

It’s what Stan said, isn’t it? That’s why it made him so furious. The truth always rankles.

Except Kyle has the nerve to doubt him. “What? Kenny, this is a pit stop while you figure out your life. My mom knows that.”

“Pit stop,” Kenny derides. “That’s a nice way to put it.”  

That doesn’t sit well with Kyle, at all. “Stop pretending like you’re not smart, dude! Academia didn’t fucking reject you, dude. You rejected it.”

“I didn’t have a choice!” The words explode from Kenny’s mouth, resentment he didn’t know he was hanging onto dripping off each syllable.

“I know that. You don’t think I know that? Dropping out to take care of your dad is one of the bravest things I’ve ever heard, but Kenny, that was years ago. Your family’s back on its feet-“

Kenny scoffs, because it’s one of the most generous descriptions of the McCormicks he’s ever heard. Kev takes odd handyman jobs where he can, but he’s got a kid on the way, and Karen’s job at some gaudy accessory store at the mall barely makes minimum wage. Kenny’s the only one with a diploma between the three of them, and what he rakes in doesn’t come close to covering the lingering ghost of their dad’s medical bills.

It was a stupid injury. A shoddy construction site, a misused tool. Workman’s comp barely covered their electric bill. He still hears the echo of the call, received in his dorm room at State.

He’d only finished a single semester. Four months, where he thought he’d escaped.

Some things aren’t meant to be.

If Kenny’s parents got their act together, now, he wouldn’t worry so damn bad, but his mom’s never held down a job in her life, and his dad’s coopted the old injury as an excuse to dodge any responsibility. What a shock. Everything’s landed on Kenny’s shoulders.

Can’t Kyle see that?

“Can we not talk about this?”

It’s not going to change anything. Nothing ever changes, in South Park.

Kyle slumps back, cranky. “Fine. But you know I’m right.”

Kenny’s saved from coming up with a witty retort. Clyde’s made his daily appearance, face automatically dropping when he sees who is manning the register. “What time is Craig’s shift?”

“He’s not on today,” Kenny snaps. But he tones down the unnecessary dickishness immediately. It’s not Clyde’s fault he’s working a dead end job and Kyle expects him to dig his way out with his own fricking fingernails. “The Bijou’s playing the Red Racer movie for the matinee.”

“That movie sucked.”

“Movie tie-ins always do,” Kenny sympathizes. “But, _Craig_.”

The reasoning is sound. Clyde does some hard thinking, evidenced by the scrunch of his face and the huddle of his shoulders. Then he pulls out his cell and calls…well, presumably his boss.

“Hey,” he coughs into the phone, dramatically. “I can’t make it back today. I’m sick.”

He pauses to listen to something on the other end. Then:

“I’ve got a fever. And diarrhea. And, er.” He glances Kenny’s direction. Kenny imitates sticking a finger down his throat. “Projectile vomiting.”

Clyde pauses again, before nodding. “Sure. Right, yeah. I’ll go to the hospital. Get you a note.”

“That was masterful,” Kenny tells him, once he hangs up.

“Right. You still have that old prescription pad?”

“I can do you one better.” Kenny nudges Kyle with his foot. “Can you whip something up?”

“I don’t have a prescription pad,” Kyle replies. “I’m barely a doctor.”

Clyde and Kenny stare at him. Judge him. Let him feel the full weight of their disappointment.

Kyle sighs. “I’ll figure it out.”

“Why’re you hiding out down there?” Clyde questions, peering over the counter at the wild tumble of Kyle’s hair.

Kyle peers back up at him, gaze emerald green and serious. “Avoiding life. It’s almost as good as my bed.”

Clyde nods, like this is an acceptable explanation. “Okay. See you gentledudes later.”

“Clyde, wait!” Kenny slaps his palm on the counter, trying to grab Clyde’s attention. “Are you- are you serious, about Craig?”

“Of course I am.” Clyde’s warm brown eyes widen, one hand on the swinging door. It _hee-haws_ for attention, but he doesn’t leave.

Kenny doesn’t know why he’s prying. This isn’t any of his business. But. “But, uh. You know he’s still not over Tweek, right?”

Clyde bristles. “That’s because he won’t give himself a chance to be. He doesn’t know how to forgive himself for letting everything fall apart.”

In the heavy silence that follows, Kyle pipes in meaningfully, “I hear that’s a real problem in this town.”

Kenny wishes he’d keep his mouth shut. He doesn’t need the teachable moment. “Mind your own business, Broflovski.”

Clyde shakes his head.

“You guys have a weird relationship.”

“We know,” Kyle agrees from the floor.

“But,” Clyde continues, pushing the door open with another _hee-haw_. “You suit each other, you know?”

With a creak and a gust of wind, the door closes behind him.

* * *

 

Sheila makes her signature chicken for dinner, because Kyle requested it.

For Kenny. It’s enough to make a guy all warm and fuzzy inside.

She bustles around the kitchen wearing a sleek gray and black apron, her hair piled in tiny, artful curls on top of her head. She’s padding around in stockinged feet, a touch of lived-in domesticity that contrasts her perfectly starched button down and the classy gold earrings catching the kitchen light.

A night in with Kenny’s family usually involves microwave meals on paper plates. Kenny watches the carefully choreographed dance of a normal mom making normal dinner with idle fascination.

Next to him, Ike is struggling to pop the cork on a bottle of wine with their velociraptor screw. Kyle is decidedly not helping, twirling an empty glass between his fingers like an old timey villain. “You’re doing great.”

“Shut up,” Ike retorts. “I have a 4.0 GPA. I’m on the Dean’s List. I can figure this out.”

“You’re so smart,” Kyle coos, fake encouragement.

Ike grimaces, brandishing the bottle and saying, “I will hit you with this.”

“Careful,” Kenny warns. “Kid’s got like, thirty pounds on you.”

Which is true. Kyle is tall and lean, careful grace to the curve of his muscles. Basketball stretched him out instead of bulking him up, and his red flannel shirt hangs long and loose off him. Ike, by contrast, is the same height, but broad. He’s still got some baby fat to his cheeks, but he’s solid in his build, blue V-neck hugging his body in ways that make Kenny feel uncomfortable.

Must be all the ice hockey.

“I can take ‘im,” Kyle replies, with the confidence of all big brothers throughout the course of history. He scratches a patch of strawberry blonde scruff at his jaw. “Ma. Are you sure we can’t do anything?”

“Don’t be silly,” Sheila chastises from her spot over the stove. “You boys relax.”

“She says relax, but what she means is she doesn’t want us to muck anything up,” Kyle tells Kenny in a stage whisper.

“You come by that Type A personality honestly.”

Kyle gapes, mock outraged. “Are you calling me a control freak?”

“I prefer the phrase anal retentive.” Kenny eyes the way that Kyle’s hair curls attractively around his pinking ears. “But that’s because I like thinking about your ass.”  

Ike scowls. “Stop flirting. Please.”

He manages the cork about five minutes later. The white table cloth is flecked with tiny dots of burgundy that Ike is trying to shift out of view. He moves Sheila’s tasteful palm leaf placemats around, turning plates this way and that to make everything work.

He complains, “It shouldn’t have been that hard. I’m a genius, damnit.”

They’ve got a complete set of blue and white china that probably cost a pretty penny, with matching cups and hammered copper cutlery. Kenny’s family has two plastic bowls and a commemorative Miami Vice plate between the four of them. He runs his fingers over the scalloped edge of the tablecloth and tugs, shifting another stain out of sight.

Ike grins in thanks, a flash of white teeth and wryness that’s almost identical to the smug, tilted smile Kyle’s wearing. They’re family, through and through.

“Street smart trumps book smart every time,” Kyle explains.

He’s got the casual hypocrisy of someone who is incredibly book smart. He also isn’t tucking away the evidence, because he is a douchebag and finds this entire thing hilarious.

“You tell him, Dr. Broflovski.” Because Kenny strives to be helpful, he emphasizes the word _doctor_ with a roll of his tongue and an eyebrow wiggle. “Remind me how all that common sense worked out for you?”

“Shut up.”

“Boys,” Sheila admonishes. “Wash up. It’s time to eat.”

She carries no fewer than five different dishes, piping hot, to the table. Mr. Broflovski, who left kitchen duty up to his wife while he read the paper in his study, finally emerges to pour the wine. It’s all very manly and something that Kenny only thought existed in TV stereotypes. He sits down and lets himself be served, exchanging ironic looks with Kyle like, _do you see this shit_? 

Kyle lifts his shoulders. He’s used to his parents.

Whatever, Kenny still thinks it’s weird.

Home-cooked meals are a rare treat. The chicken is soft and finely spiced, and there are herbed potatoes, a light salad, asparagus, and broccoli with bacon on the side. Everything wafts off a heady, intoxicating aroma that Kenny prefers to the wine. He makes quick work of his first round, not bothering to eat anything in order, and then dives in for second helpings.

He’s going to get everything he can out of this, before the interrogation starts.

And it starts.

“Kenny. How long have you and Kyle been…” Sheila clears her throat. “Together?”

“Not long,” Kenny replies, before Kyle can stutter out some mortified lie. Even knowing that this was the point of dinner, and forcing Kenny to rehearse, he’s still godawful at trying to get anything past his mom. “A few weeks.”

“Do you think it’s wise?” Sheila asks, not bothering to mince her words. Kenny’s stomach tightens. Here they go. “Starting something new?”

Kyle grabs a bread roll, tossing it from hand to hand so that he doesn’t have to look his mom in the eye.

She barrels onward with all the subtly for which she is renowned, “Once you’re back on your feet, you’ll be heading back West.”

The bread falls, forgotten, onto the blue and white pattern of Kyle’s plate. “Ma!”

This isn’t the direction either of them expected she would swerve.

“What? I apologize, Kenny. You’re like a…distant nephew to me,” she says, course correcting from the word _son_ after careful evaluation of Kenny’s elbows and protruding collarbone. He’s not sure what she sees there – an outward representation of his life below the poverty line or his lasciviousness or if it’s something deeper, hiding in his marrow. He scrutinizes his skin, wondering if he’s got some choice words stamped there. And Sheila is merciless, still speaking. “But you should know what you’re getting into. Kyle has a bright future ahead of him.”

Aha.

“And I don’t.”

It’s a statement. Pure truth, as far as Kenny’s concerned.

It’s also a redirect, a way of trying to guilt her out of the conversation. It would have worked with his own mom, or Stan’s. But Sheila is a clever woman, and kind, under all her bluster.

She shakes her head, adamant. “Of course you do. I’ve no doubt about that. However, you and Kyle are following different cardinal directions on life’s compass. Surely, you must admit that.”

It’s sensible. Not an insult.

Leave it to Kyle to take it that way.

His cheeks are an angry red, and he shouts, “Mother!”

“There’s no need to raise your voice, young man,” Kyle’s dad chides. It’s the first interest he’s shown in this entire discussion, and the last. He returns to chasing his broccoli around his plate with a fork the second the words leave his mouth.

“No need? She’s scaring off my boyfriend!”

“Hey.” Kenny covers Kyle’s hand with his own, lacing their fingers without processing what, exactly, he’s doing. “She’s not saying anything we didn’t already know. No harm, no foul.”

“It’s harming me.” Kyle spins his attention onto Kenny, glowering for all he’s worth. He’s got fury in the whites of his eyes, crimson-veined, and it makes the green of his irises eerie and sharp. “I can’t do this. I need to be- not here.”

He hops to his feet, darting first towards the living room, where the safety of the stairs, and his bedroom, await. Then, after a moment’s indecision, withering under his mom’s reproach, he heads towards the sliding glass door that leads outside instead.

Kenny sighs, scooting back his chair. “Excuse me.”

* * *

 

It’s cold, and all he’s got on is a burnt orange Henley, but Kenny ventures into the winter landscape anyway. It’s not like the awkwardness he’s leaving at that dinner table is any more welcoming.

Kyle’s back porch is straight out of a home goods ad, replete with tiki torches, fairy lights, and a tarp-draped grill sitting under two solid inches of ice and snow. The flurries are coming down in soft puffs, flakes melting every time they touch Kenny’s clothes or Kyle’s exposed skin.

“I’ve had worse dates,” he comments. He’s not lying.

Kyle cringes. “Sorry, dude. My mom’s a lot to take.”

“Again with the apologies.”

“Fine. Fuck you then.” Kyle throws himself down onto one of the soggy green alpine chairs. It can’t be comfortable, soaking rapidly through his clothes. “But I didn’t know she was going to utilize you in her campaign to get me back on track.”

“Will you go? Back on track?” Kenny asks, unsure why he dreads the answer. He’s got a nice life, when Kyle’s not around. Steady, if unchallenging, job. Family that loves him in their own unique way. Friends. Hell, he never fights with Stan when Kyle’s not in the vicinity.

He’s a wrecking ball of a boy.

“Hell if I know. I don’t want to go back to Washington, but what am I going to do? Stay here? Work up at Hells Pass?”

“Do I look like a life coach? That’s more in Stan’s wheelhouse.”

“ _Don’t_ talk about Stan,” Kyle mutters darkly. “He’s why we’re in this situation to begin with.”

“No need to remind me. Or show me the dick pics again.” Kenny shudders in recollection. “I really hope you deleted those.”

Kyle regards the stars miserably. “It’d be easier for everyone if I go back.”

“Probably.”

“Kenny!”

“What? Oh, I thought I was supposed to help you wallow.” Kenny perches on the arm of the alpine chair, starting out into the dark and concluding, “But, like. The point stands. It would be easier for everyone if you left.”

Kyle makes a small, wounded sound.

Kenny says, “It’d also suck major balls.”

“Why?” Kyle asks, plaintively.

“We just got you back, Brof. I’m not ready to give you up.” His words are loud in the snowy hush, and entirely too honest. “None of us are. Just ‘cause something is easy doesn’t mean it’s the right move.”

He keeps doing this, flexing this unused, forgotten part of himself.

The part that adored Kyle.

His words brighten the weary frown right off of Kyle’s face. He muses, “I never thought Hells Pass was that bad.”

“Yes you did.”

“Yes I did. Everyone that works there is a psychopath. But in lieu of anything else…”

He doesn’t finish the sentence, choosing to stand. “If we don’t go back inside, my mom will never let me hear the end of it.”

Kenny stays where he is, enjoying the cold rub of the wind across his cheekbones, and a little bit terrified that he’s going to drip on Sheila’s stiff coral chairs.

Standing in the doorway, Kyle is cut from shadow. Faceless. All sharp angles.

He’s a black hole, a tear in the fabric of the universe.

He takes Kenny’s breath away.

“You coming?”

Snow melts on the bridge of Kenny’s nose. He feels like something inside of him is cracking open, a scar, an old wound. He doesn't know how to sew it back up again. 

“I’ll be right there.”

* * *

 

For all of Kenny’s bravado, he’s never been spectacular at holding a grudge.

Few years back, he and Stan went in on an ancient Toyota Paseo with the idea that once it was operational, Kenny could drive it. The car is a total piece of crap, held together by tape and glue, and it’s the best birthday present anyone has ever bought for Kenny.

The thing’s currently housed in Stan’s parents garage. Kenny’s got a wide open driveway at home, but Kevin fancies himself a mechanic and Kenny never wanted to share. It’s his thing with Stan – one Sunday a month, drinking beer and fixing up the bright teal car.

Kenny considers ditching today, but he loves that car, and he misses Stan.

He carries a six pack of cheap IPA up the driveway, his free hand shoved deep in the pocket of his parka. He’s uncertain if he’s surprised or relieved when he sees the Marsh’s garage propped open, Stan sitting on the hood of his dad’s car.

“Wasn’t sure if you were going to show up.”

Kenny raises the beer in greeting. “Shame to break tradition.”

Knees splayed in ripped jeans and a black t-shirt, Stan’s more himself here than he ever is in fancy suits or when he’s playing mannequin for Bebe. Kenny’s spine relaxes incrementally, the familiarity luring him into a false sense of security. He sets the beer on a rolling tool chest, blue and silver.

Stan says, “I’m glad you came.”

“Me too.”

They spend a few minutes discussing their game plan, which part of the car they want to tackle first today. It’s easier to talk about that then what really needs to be said, and Kenny privately hopes that it’s all they’ll say today.

He pops the tab on two of the beers, and hands one to Stan. “Cheers.”

Stan takes a long swallow, Adam’s apple bobbing as he drinks. He says, “Look, man. I didn’t mean it.”

Kenny grimaces. So much for hoping they’d do what normal red blooded American men do and avoid ever having a real, honest to god talk.

Stan is perpetually in touch with his emotions.

“What I said the other day. I was mad, and confused, and hurt, but I shouldn’t have taken it out on you.”

“Confused?” Kenny asks, curious despite himself.

“I didn’t know you were- that you would-“ Stan hesitates, trying to find the right words for what Kenny is. “Would-“

“Suck cock?” Kenny watches Stan spit his beer all over the garage floor. “Is that not what you meant? Sorry, not sorry.”

“It is what I meant, but not-“ Stan heaves a breath, wiping the back of his wrist against his mouth. “That way. Have you?”

“Sucked cock?” Kenny raises an eyebrow. “On occasion.”

He watches Stan struggle with asking if he’s ever sucked Kyle’s cock before swerving diplomatically. “Dude. Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

“You never asked.”

The corners of Stan’s mouth tick downward. “I can’t ask what I don’t know, dickwad.”

“Counterpoint.” Kenny jabs a finger in Stan’s general direction, taking a long swig of beer for courage. “Why didn’t you ever tell me you liked Kyle?”

Stan crosses his arms. “I thought I’d always made it pretty clear.”

“That you guys are joined at the hip? Obviously. That you wanted to be joined by your love rod? Not so much.”

Turning faintly green, the way he always does when he’s forced to talk about liking someone, Stan says, “Kyle is…”

_Emotionally manipulative_ , Kenny’s mind supplies.

He thinks about how Kyle roped him into all of this, accidentally on purpose. How they’re messing with Stan, rather than forcing Kyle to make fucking choice already, because they all prize Broflovski’s feelings over anyone else’s.

“My best friend,” Stan settles on, although it there are myriad other phrases he could use. He toys with the ends of his wind-tousled hair, adding, “And it took me a while to notice how sexy he’s gotten.”

Sexy in a broken way, shining brilliantly one second, fragmenting the next.

But that’s not fair. Kenny understands Kyle’s side of things, even now. He sees the moral quandary here. Besides, it’s his fault for forcing Kyle to confront Stan in the first place – he knew Kyle wasn’t ready to decide. Kenny pressed the issue, because Kenny wanted it to be over and done with and out of his hands. And Kenny advocated for the shitshow they’re stuck in now, because Kenny wanted to Stan to squirm, a little bit.

Squirming is less exciting when he actively has to face it. “I like him, Kenny. I really, really like him.”

“You don’t think that’s important information for, I don’t know, Bebe?”

“You’re right.” Stan nods. “I’m trying to find a way to tell her. I don’t want to hurt anyone. I love her. She just…scares me, a little bit.”

“You’re a brave guy, Marsh. You’ll figure it out.” Kenny runs his thumb along the condensation coating his beer can. “Even if she is fucking terrifying. You ever find her secret stash of AKs?”

“Not yet.”

Kenny isn’t certain how to ask what he wants to ask. He feels like a cretin. “Have you tried talking to someone about all this?”

Stan winces. “I’m talking to you.”

Kenny is a shit friend. He kicks himself, inwardly, for being the worst friend in the history of all friendships. “Someone who doesn’t have a vested interest in all of this.”

Shaking his head, Stan says, “Cartman’s gone dark. Token’s too close to Kyle. Craig’s too close to you. Clyde doesn’t fucking care. Wendy…”

He trails off, because they both know who Wendy is too close to. They both go quiet then, each tinkering with their respective parts of the car for minutes on end. Until Stan, unable to stand long silences, pipes up, “So who was the first?”

“First what?” Kenny asks.

“Dude. That you…?”

“Sucked off?”

“Can you please stop saying suck?”

“Fine. Fucked.” Kenny shifts his weight back on his heels, crouched down near the wheel well of the car. He can’t see Stan’s face, which makes it easy to admit, “Mr. Kaczynski. Eighth grade.”

“Jesus.” Stan whistles. “That’s some pedo bullshit.”

“It was one time.”

“That doesn’t make it right. Okay, but serious inquiry here. Which of our teachers haven’t you fucked?”

“Um.” Kenny takes a second to think about it. “Garrison, for sure.”

“…is that it?” Stan demands, dismayed.

“I’d have to think about it.”

“You are a piece of work, McCormick.”

They trade insults like that, mindless banter, fiddling with what needs fiddling with. An hour passes, and then too, the wind whipping through the evergreens, the sun playing peekaboo with the clouds. Kenny tells Stan about the new developments in the saga of Craig and Clyde. Stan tells Kenny about Bebe’s newfound fascination with crystals, which is probably code for a shift into the cocaine trade.

And, once an hour passes with no mention of everyone’s favorite redheaded troublemaker, Stan turns to Kenny. He’s wind-burned and storm-tossed, skin chapped with cold, and friendlier now by half. “Ski weekend at Token’s place. Saturday.”

Kenny pauses, the implications setting in. “You assholes weren’t going to invite me?”

Stan’s lips curve. “Sorry, man. Thought it’d be awkward.”

“It’s still going to be awkward.”

“Probably. But, we’ll get through it.”

“Power of positive thought?”

“Something like that.”

“Sure. I’ll come,” Kenny agrees. “Can I borrow your old board?”

“Absolutely.”

That’s the great thing about Stan. Even in the middle of the worst fight they’ve had in years, he’s still innately himself. Gracious. Gorgeous.

And an annoyingly good friend.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry! I know I said three chapters, but this one ran longer than I expected, so I had to break it up.

Kyle idles in Kenny’s driveway for a minimum of fifteen minutes before he starts leaning heavy on the horn.

Kenny keeps him waiting, in part because he’s annoyed Kyle knew about the weekend before he did. Token and Stan issued separate invitations, which makes sense. Token is eons closer to Kyle than he’s ever been to Kenny, and Stan…Well.

It still bites.

He’s not being one hundred percent vindictive, though. The other reason Kenny stalls on getting his skinny ass in Kyle’s car is because it is an Ordeal every time he tries to leave his stupid house.

Karen and their mom are having a near apocalyptic row at the base of the stairs, effectively blocking Kenny’s exit strategy.

Rather than help, Kevin is leaning against the bannister, a glass of amber liquor sloshing in his hand while he eggs them on. He alternates between shouts of _You tell ‘er, mom_! And _Damn right, Kar_!

In the other room, his dad is hurling expletives at a college football game. So that’s no help. Kenny grits his teeth, casting about for a substitute escape.

“How is it my fault if that boyfriend of yours is dumber than a bag of bricks, I-“

Kyle honks, the noise blaring through the thin walls of their house.

“-clearly, I inherited my taste from _you_ , mom!”

“Girl, don’t you call your father stupid-“

Kenny squeezes the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. Okay, he can do this. He evaluates his options.

“If the trucker hat fits!”

“Ooooh, you have a mouth on you-“

“Sure does, mom,” Kevin interjects enthusiastically, raising his glass in salute.

“God, _shut up_ , Kevin!” Karen spins her attention towards him, eyes blazing.

Kenny seizes the opportunity to vault over the bannister, landing squarely between his siblings. Whiskey sloshes on Kevin’s shirt. Karen’s mouth falls open.

“Kenny, what’re you-“

“The ‘ell, Kenny!” Kevin yowls.

“Can’t talk now, sis,” Kenny replies, dropping a kiss on the sharp jut of Karen’s cheekbone and flipping Kevin off at the same time.

His mom, less fazed by his stunt, mutters, “I really hate when you do parkour in the house, kid.”

Kenny grins, wide and cheesy, kissing her cheek as well while he dodges for the outside world. “Be good. Don’t burn down the house.”

Her indignant squawk is lost to the fresh air, the rough woven ends of Kenny’s scarf flapping behind him as the door swings shut. He jogs up to Kyle’s car, where the man himself is hunched against the wheel with a pissy expression.

Kenny goes to open the passenger side door before realizing it’s already taken. He props his elbows on the windowsill and waits for it to be rolled down. The whine it makes as it slots down grates on Kenny’s ears.

“Hiya, Ike. You stowing away?”

Ike smirks. “Hitching a ride. Do you want me to get in the back?”

“Nah. Hey, _babe_.” They've been at this for three weeks, and Kyle still looks like he wants to laugh every time Kenny breaks out a pet name. Only now, he scowls like he's smelled sour milk. Kenny squints into the dimly lit interior of the car. “All those frown lines for me?”

“What the fuck were you doing, Kenny? Curling your hair?”

Kenny pushes back the hood of his parka and runs a finger across soft, shower-damp waves. “I thought I’d try something new.”

“What? Bathing?” Scoffs a voice from the backseat.

Kenny grins, all teeth. He should’ve figured – it’s a three-day weekend, a holiday, so everyone has off. Of course they’re all gonna turn up.

“Craig! Didn’t see you there. How’s it hanging, buddy?”

“Would it kill you to be on time, fuckface?”

“Nice to see you too, pal.” Kenny crosses his arms, and his eyes, startling a snort out of Craig.

“Stop gabbing and get in already.” Kyle grunts, fiddling with the steering wheel. “We’re late.”

“Token’s cabin isn’t a thing you can be late for,” Kenny begins, but at Kyle’s dark look he obediently shuts his trap.

He scrambles into the car before Kyle can decide to drive off without him, dropping a peck on Kyle’s cheek because Craig and Ike expect it.

Besides, it gives Kenny a giddy thrill every time he gets to kiss him.

And, when Kyle’s not being a little bitch, he insists on it every time they’re out in public. In front of his mom; at the Kum & Go; one time, when they spied Stan at the movie theater. All these tiny pecks are driving Kenny slowly, enchantingly insane. 

Lips pressed to skin, Kenny murmurs, “Has anyone ever told you that you need to loosen up?”

“All the time,” Ike says.

“Bite me,” Kyle retorts.

“Unclench,” Kenny advises in return.

Kyle starts down the road to the west of town, presumably making a beeline for wherever Ike’s headed. Kenny watches the muscles in his jaw jump, Kyle’s ever present perfectionist side making a grand show of things. Thoughtlessly, he angles himself across the backseat, reaching for Kyle’s shoulder to give it a tight, quick squeeze. “Sorry for making you wait.”

It’s like that’s all that Kyle wanted. The apology, or the brush of Kenny’s hand. The tension floods from his body as he relaxes by increments. “No big.”

Ike makes a noise better suited to a truffle pig. “Please, you spaz. _No big_.”

Lazily, Kenny intervenes. “Be nice to your brother, kid. He’s got some trauma.”

“Oh, right, all that doctor sex he bore witness to.” Ike is visibly exasperated. “That sounds really horrible.”

“Aren’t you twelve?” Craig asks Ike. “Do you even know what sex is?”

“I’m in college,” Ike retorts, scandalized. “I’ve had sex.”

“No you haven’t,” Kyle tells him, like he can make it so by willpower alone.

“Have too.”

“Have not.”

Craig settles back into his seat and says, “Can we not talk about sex in front of the minor?”

“You’re such a prude, Tucker,” Kenny says. “You know you want to hear about doctor sex.”

Kyle shudders in the front seat. “The things that happen on operating tables…”

“Pass. Hard pass.” Craig shakes his head vigorously.

Kenny knocks their knees together, lulled into a quiet kind of happiness by the car ride and his friends.

They pull onto a tree-lined street, frosty branches glistening in the sunlight, and drop Ike off at a house with big, cheery windows and a bright blue paintjob. Then they settle in for the long haul, the winding path into the mountains that tower in the distance. They’re hard to look at, snow-capped peaks reflecting the sky, brilliant, despite the gray day.

Weak sunlight filters through cottony clouds. It falls intermittently, lukewarm, on the sharp angles of Kenny’s face through the moon roof.

He tilts the line of his jaw towards the warmth, the soft, folksy beat on the radio lulling him to sleep.

* * *

 

Token doesn’t own a cabin.

It’s a fucking ski chalet. Three floors, sloping roofs, and a monthly maid service are all sparkling features of the place, and every time Kenny visits he spends the weekend gorging himself on French toast and roasting Token for being a rich, generous bastard.

Kyle trails Kenny’s footsteps into the substantial common area and goes, “Whoa.”

There’s a roaring fireplace, an entire story high. The floor to ceiling windows look out onto the soft, snowy slope of the mountain. Pines nestle into white dunes and drifts, their needles poking through white like green fringe.

Clyde is sprawled against a reindeer skin on the floor, warming himself, while Bebe and Token talk in low voices on the window seats. She has her knees curled up to her chest, while he leans earnestly towards her, engaged in an animated discussion of…something.

Field amputations or vaginal prolapse. Kenny doesn’t want to hear about what kind of shared interests those two have.

He grins at the flickering flames and says to Kyle, “I know, right?”

Kyle whistles, calling across the room, “Token, man, this is beyond swanky.”

Behind them, there’s a loud thud. Craig, dropping their luggage. He mutters, “Thanks for helping, assholes.”

“I told you we’d come back for it,” Kenny replies.

Token is up, off the window seat and coming towards them both with a wide grin on his face. He’s tucked inside a thick, purple sweater – some kind of cashmere and wool blend, probably. “You made it!”

“Small miracles happen,” Craig calls over their shoulders. “Kyle drives like my grandma. If she was blind.”

“Rude,” Kyle comments, taking Token’s hand and pulling him into a manly backslap-hug type deal.

“Token, you wealthy bastard!” Kenny says cheerfully, when the bro-hug is broken.

Token rolls his eyes. “How am I supposed to respond to that? Like Kenny, you poor fuck?”

“Only if you want to sound like Cartman.”

Aghast, Token responds, “No, thank you.”

“He’s dicking with you,” Kyle supplies, slinging an arm around Token’s shoulders. “Never apologize for being rich, man. The universe had to give you something good to balance out the rampant racism and systematic inequality you face for being black.”

“Hey.” Token shoves him lightly. “The universe also gave me incredible good looks.”

“That too.” Kyle grins, and Token ruffles his hair.

Kenny is intensely and abruptly jealous. He searches for something to distract his attention, but Craig is busy fondling Token’s game system, and his only recourse ends up being–

“Kenny!”

He’s pulled into a cloud of perfume and hair product, a bear hug that grinds his bones.

“Hi,” he gasps out, trying to struggle free. “Bebe.”

He’s got mixed feelings about her, her relationship with Stanley notwithstanding. Because on the one hand, she’s terrifying. But, on the other, she’s got a rack that would start wars, and her bear hugs are top shelf.

Into his neck, she murmurs, “I’m glad you and Stan made up. He’d been sulking for ages. I worried I’d have to…intervene.”

And back to scary. Kenny extricates himself from her arms, chuckling nervously. “Good thing it didn’t come to that, huh? Good thing…say, would you like a drink?”

Bebe’s got a chunk of ice on her finger big enough for a penguin to ice skate on. It catches the fading sunlight when she pushes a hunk of curls behind her ear. “Stan’s spiking some hot chocolate in the kitchen.”

“Cocoa for everyone!” Kenny announces, desperate not to be assassinated. He makes his way to the kitchen at a brisk pace, cautioning Bebe, “Hey, you stay here. Mingle. I’ll bring it back.”

She ignores him, sauntering at his heels like a hellhound. The hair on the back of his neck prickles, his shoulders inching up to his ears.

He brushes through the pocket doors into a kitchen the size of Manhattan, full of copper pots and cast iron fixings, authentically inauthentic farmhouse chic. Spanish tile in reds, blues, and greens squeaks under his feet, but spotting Stan bent over a full, boiling saucepan is sweet relief.

“Hello, you!” Kenny full on gropes him from behind, wrapping his arms around Stan’s middle and leaning his chin against the indent between Stan’s shoulder and neck. He hisses into his skin, “ _Save me_!”

Stan swats him off, wooden spoon slapping liquid chocolate against Kenny’s linked hands. “Clinging isn’t attractive, man.”

“How will I ever land a husband?” Kenny gives Stan’s flat abs one last appreciative feel, then places the sticky back of his palm against his forehead dramatically. His grimace is immediate. Decisively, he licks the chocolate off before he can make that mistake again. “Need an assist?”

Bebe is already rounding up mugs, pouring an unhealthy portion of bourbon in the base of each. Stan cocks an eyebrow Kenny’s way like, _you useless bastard_. 

“Look, I am great at moral support,” Kenny retorts. He’s also great at ladling out the cocoa, once it’s done, and piling each cup with enough marshmallows that they look like tiny snow banks.

When their masterpieces are done, they holler for the others to join them. The massive kitchen fills up quick, until they’ve all got their spiked hot cocoa, perched on the plush kitchen stools.

The sink is lined by giant picture windows, and over a row of broad shoulders, the sky brims with color, bleeds the red of a fresh cut. It seeps into oranges and yellows, pink-flesh edges, an abstract canvas. Until the sun dips past the horizon and the whole landscape darkens, everything taking on the purplish hue of a painful bruise.

Kenny watches the sunset thoughtfully, one ankle caught against Kyle’s on his stool. He sips his cocoa, more bourbon-sugar than anything else, weirdly at peace with how everything is playing out. Kyle quirks a tiny, toothy smile his way, all of it mirrored on his face.

“Alright, ground rules.” Token holds up a finger. “There’s only one ground rule. No sex in the hot tub.”

Stan, Bebe, and Clyde groan long and loudly.

Clyde bitches, “You’ve never had that rule before.”

“I never had to worry about you getting any before.” He glares pointedly at Clyde and Craig, who yelps in protest. “That’s right, folks. This is a Clyde-specific rule.”

“Hey!” Clyde yelps.

Stan grins, throwing an arm around Bebe’s shoulder. “So, what you’re saying is…”

Token makes a disgusted sound. “Jesus, Marsh, it’s social hour. Keep it in your pants. Go write some affirmations, or something.”

Kyle laughs loudly, before transforming it into a cough. Stan has the nerve to look wounded.

The group devolves into rambunctious, tipsy chatter, that grows rowdier the drunker they get. Bebe tips the bottle of bourbon into everyone’s dwindling cups whenever they aren’t looking.

Clyde and Craig launch into a fevered argument over that game where you can nuke people, while Token stretches his arms out on the table, lazy and satisfied. “You sticking around for a while, Broflovski?”

Kyle gets that edge in his gaze he adopted when they had dinner with his mom, and without meaning to, Kenny grabs for his hand.

Kyle’s palm is warm, but dry, unlike Kenny’s. He’s sweating enough to match the uptick in his heartbeat caused by this accidental affection. He’s got a flush spreading over his features, too much Irish blood hiding under his pale, mountain-man skin, and he hopes no one notices.

When Kyle speaks, there’s gravel in his voice, a scrape that probably has nothing to do with Kenny’s touch. Probably. “I dunno. I haven’t got any plans.”

Token knows their boy like he knows himself. He frowns. “Isn’t that going to drive you crazy?”

It’s a valid question. Kyle thrives on purpose, and withers on the vine whenever he doesn’t have some kind of cause. It’s a miracle he’s out of his cave right now.

“Maybe. But I don’t want to spend all my time figuring out my next move while life passes me by.”

Stan nods vigorously, “Here, here.”

His eyes are locked on the intersection between Kenny and Kyle’s hands. Forgiven, but not forgotten, Kenny supposes.  

“Well, okay…” Token doesn’t not sound convinced. “But if you need a leg up, I know private practice isn’t your thing, but I’ve got all kinds of connections around here.”

“You want me in a cushy office job.” Kyle sounds offended. And intrigued.

“Less time with a scalpel, but tamer hours. Mostly,” Token agrees.

“Can we not talk about work now?” Stan groans. “I’m tired of adulting.”

“You and me both,” Kenny mutters, even though he’s been adulting since his adolescence. He got his first job in grade school, and he never stopped chasing coin since. “How about more bourbon?”

Bebe obligingly funnels some into his mug. With his free arm, Kyle bumps his cup against Kenny’s, scooting it under the stream of liquor. Bebe giggles a little, buzzed out of her blessed mind, but not spilling a drop. “You two are cute. Have I told you that?”

Kyle reddens. “No.”

He pulls his fingers loose from Kenny’s, embarrassed. Or ashamed? Kenny’s got no idea. His stomach turns.

The night grows darker.

Clyde wants to play _never have I ever_ , which everyone vetoes, because they are grown humans who do not need to outdo each other that way. It doesn’t stop him from shouting, “Never have I ever,” followed by some kind of outrageous follow-on at random intervals in the conversation.

They learn a lot about Clyde, enough to narrow down the betting pool on what it is he actually sells. Craig tries earnestly to get him to shut his mouth, but Clyde uses the opportunity to drape himself across Craig’s lap and shout more non sequiturs.

Craig does not appear to know how he feels about that, vague interest and annoyance fighting each other in the pinch between his eyebrows. He settles for resting a hand on Clyde’s knee, which Kenny could have told him was not the right move. Not if he wants Clyde to ever stop clinging.

But Clyde looks gratified, and it’s hard to resent him for it when he’s yelling, “Never have I ever laid an egg,” like it’s a thing humans do, his mouth smeared with residual marshmallow. It’s pretty funny, in fact, until he shouts, “Never have I ever kissed Stan Marsh.”

Stan laughs it up. “You’re such a goober.”

That’s not the part Kenny that grabs Kenny’s attention, though. The part that stills everything in him, converting his insides to icicles.

The part that really gets his goat is this:

When Bebe and Kyle both surreptitiously take a drink.

* * *

 

The hall closet is the lamest hidey-hole that Kenny can choose, but it’s not without irony.

He drags Kyle by his ear in amongst the cedar and scented fabric sheets, parkas shifting around them. “Were you ever going to tell me?”

Kyle is rubbing his ear lobe perplexedly. “Tell you what?”

Kenny can’t blame him for being confused. Half an hour has passed since the incongruous sip of spiked cocoa. But he does blame him, god dang it.

“You. Stan. Smoochies.”

There’s some emphatic hand movements that result in Kenny almost stabbing himself in the eye with a hanger, but the message gets across.

“Oh. That.” Kyle shrugs. “It wasn’t worth mentioning.”

“Wasn’t because it was supremely unsatisfying, or?”

“ _Kenny_.” Kyle’s face scrunches up like a French bulldog. “It happened in high school.”

“Nice to know you aren’t getting any behind my back.”

“You’re not actually my boyfriend,” Kyle says, startled by the vitriol in Kenny’s words.

The low embers of rage in Kenny’s chest are promptly doused. “I know that.”

“Do you? You seem…”

“I’m drunk,” Kenny objects. “I’m drunk, and I can’t play the role of Hot Sex Toy Number Two if I don’t have all the details, here.”

Panic is making him sloppy, bringing out a good old boy accent that barely ever shows itself these days.

“Kenny,” Kyle repeats, clearly floundering for some way to regain control over the situation. The situation that Kenny has created through rampant, unwanted jealousy.

Shit.

He doesn’t get to do this. Not again. He is older, and smarter, and he is not going to let Kyle Broflovski fuck with his head. “So he rocked your world, huh?”

Kyle ducks beneath that cloud of curls, the same way he always does when he doesn’t want to give anything away. Kenny takes that as a _yes_.

Their paltry peck of a kiss at the bowling alley likely pales in comparison.

Kenny’s squeezing his hands into fists so hard that they hurt, but he doesn’t know what to say, or how to make something that happened years ago be okay.

Less like a betrayal, to the sweet, dopey kid in love that he was back then.

Less like getting stabbed in the kidney now.

“You should have told me,” Kenny seethes, reminding himself what he’s always known. It’s Kyle and Stan. Stan and Kyle. They’re happily ever after. He’s the hoops they jump through to get there. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“It didn’t matter. You said-“ Kyle bites down on what it is that Kenny said, but it hangs there, between them.

Kenny said he was over Kyle. Kenny swore it, up and down.

Kenny’s beginning to think he lied.

“You’re right. I overreacted. Sorry, dude. My bad.”

“Kenny, if you can’t do this…”

“No! Don’t be ridiculous. What’ve we got, a few more weeks before you two are getting frisky?” He doesn’t let Kyle lodge any sort of complaint, hurrying on, “We all know where this is headed. Can’t fight destiny.”

He marches out of the closet, spine straight, fury evaporated.

Kyle’s regard is a heavy weight against his shoulders, but Kenny can carry it. He can carry this whole charade without fucking it up.

He _can_.

Token catches him repeating that mantra, frowning first at Kenny and then at the closet. “Tell me you weren’t in there doing what I suspect you were doing.”

Kenny turns, waiting for Kyle to emerge and cement the illusion.

Kyle doesn’t.

Token rolls his eyes and says, “Anyway. I had you and Kyle in separate rooms, but now that you two are together, do you want to bunk up?”

“Sure.” It’s exactly what Kenny doesn’t want right now, not when he’s wrecked like this, but the agreement slips out before he can stop it. He follows Token up the stairs and lets himself be shown into a modest bedroom painted a cool gray, with a red flannel comforter, an indigo stitched caftan, and a luggage rack constructed out of oak wood and leather. Artsy prints hang in delicate silver frames above the rustic backboard. “Christ, you’re such a one percenter.”

“Freeloader,” Token shoots back, backing out into the hallway. He instructs, “Don’t do anything nasty on top of my grandma’s quilt,” before he shuts the door.

Kenny sits on the bed for a while, trying to figure out what the hell he’s supposed to do now.

Because he’s not going to sit here and get twisted up inside. Not over Kyle. Not over anyone.

He _refuses_ to do it, and that gives him strength. He grabs the caftan from the bed and lays it out on the sleek wood floor. A pillow completes the makeshift bed, and Kenny buries himself in it.

He lies awake long enough to realize that the room is sandwiched between Stan’s and Craig’s. The rhythmic sound of Stan’s four poster bed hitting the wall is a strange kind of lullaby, but he’s grateful that Kyle hasn’t come up yet to hear it.

Hours pass, and Kyle never comes up.

Kenny falls asleep to the rumble of Craig’s irate voice through the thin walls, informing Clyde that all his video game opinions _are wrong_.

Everything is wrong.

* * *

Morning jolts Kenny out of a nightmare world, shadows and shapes creeping over memories that play like a burning movie reel.

At least, he thinks they’re memories. South Park is a wacky place, and sometimes it’s hard to recall if he’s lived through something or he saw it on a commercial. Whatever.

Dawn is overtaking the horizon.

Kyle isn’t in the bed.

Kenny goes downstairs to find him stretched out on the couch, watching the sun greet the new day. He exhales, a breath he’s been holding for hours, it feels like. “Did you sleep at all?”

“Token and I stayed up watching horror flicks. Guy’s got a whole slasher collection.”

Kenny sits down right on Kyle’s ankles, letting him squirm around until he finds a comfortable way to support the weight. “You look rough.”

“Right back at you.” Without meaning to, Kyle reaches up and touches the dark circles pooling under Kenny’s eyes. It’s clear he doesn’t mean to, because he drops his hand back like Kenny’s skin burns. “Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize.” Kenny pats his thigh. “We’re good.”

Kyle doesn’t mask his uncertainty. Kenny ignores it anyway. He ambles up and into the kitchen, deciding to try his hand at banana pancakes, even though the only mix Token has is gluten free and smells like woodchips.

Kyle eventually follows him in, holding his phone aloft while he facetimes Cartman. The fat fuck’s got himself wrapped in some kind of red flecked white scarf and a black face mask, so that only his beady eyes are visible, and Kenny spots a row of battered black guns on the row behind him.

“Ey! Kenneh! You douchehole, you never make me pancakes!”

Kenny is completely unperturbed, used to Cartman’s habit of talking in exclamation points and baseless accusations. “I don’t like you.”

“Screw you too, you rat-faced hobo.”

“Shut it, piggly wiggly,” Kenny advises, motioning for Kyle to grab some plates for the first batch.

They move in tandem around the kitchen, Kyle patiently explaining to Cartman why drunk dialing Wendy is not going to warm the cockles of her heart, and Cartman countering that he has all the bitches he wants in-

“Uzbekistan? I thought you were in Malaysia.”

Cartman’s reply is muffled over the sound of batter sizzling, but Kenny figures the less he knows, the better.

It mystifies him how Kyle and Cartman make their friendship work, even though he’s been an integral part of it for so long. Personally, Kenny has no problem overlooking Cartman’s complete lack of a moral center, and Stan’s always been righteous enough and oblivious enough that he overlooks all of Cartman’s flaws, but Kyle? Kyle is all truth and justice, not fake news and, frankly, wholesale slaughter.

Still, it’s been twenty some odd years, and the two of them are bickering via smartphone, going strong.

When Cartman finally hangs up, ominous threats to Wendy, America, and freedom hanging in the air, Kenny slides Kyle over a plate of pancakes and some maple syrup. He cautions, “They’re a little burned.”

Kyle takes a heaping forkful. “They’re good.”

Through chews, he rails about Cartman. _Can you believe that moron_? And, _Wendy’s got her hands full. The apocalypse is nigh_. Kenny listens and nods and agrees that it’s all some kind of sick foreplay, hands moving all the while. The others filter into the kitchen as the day grows richer, warmer, and it all culminates in Token practically tumbling through the doors, strapped into a ski bib and a jacket, because he’s bourgeois that way.

“What are you losers waiting for?” He stuffs a pancake into his mouth, no syrup. “The slopes haven’t got all day.”

Kenny grins. “Let’s board.”

* * *

 

Kenny does a couple of runs that clear out his lungs and remind him why he took this up. The snow is fresh, the kind of powder people dream about. Kyle’s wobbly at first, but he catches on quick, and soon enough he’s outpacing the rest of them down the mountain.

Stan and Clyde give chase with athletic ease, while Kenny hangs back with Bebe and Craig. Token keeps a wide arc between all of them, graceful on his skis, because, “Snow boarders are douches, and yes, that includes _you_ douches.”

It’s a mostly perfect day.

Exhilarated, Kenny lands his next lift ride up with Clyde, who let Stan and Kyle go ahead of him in the hopes that he could double with Craig. But Craig is latched onto Bebe’s side, adamant that they get in some _girl time_. Kenny figures that means Clyde tried to make a move last night, and Craig’s verging on hysterical, so he takes one for the team.

He fumbles for the bar, but Clyde stops him. “Leave it up.”

Kenny does not want to do that. Kenny hates leaving the bar up. It is tempting fate, and he and fate are not on great terms on the best days.

But he obeys, in exchange for venturing, “Can I ask you something?”

“I’m an open book.”

“Okay. What do you like about Craig?” Kenny asks, snowflakes melting on his palms.

Clyde shrugs, ever the romantic. “He’s got a spectacular ass.”

Kenny thinks about that. “Can’t argue there. You’re a man of simple pleasures, Donovan.”

“Jesus, dude, it’s not _only_ that.” Clyde’s eyes dart to either side of the ski lift, like Craig might be dangling off the side to eavesdrop on this particular conversation. Satisfied that they haven’t taken on any spies, he muses slowly, “You know when someone makes you laugh? You don’t even know why, it’s like – like them existing makes you feel bubbly inside?”

Kenny grits his teeth.

“And then when you talk to them, you feel like – _more_. Cleverer. Funnier. Secure. More yourself, I guess. Craig’s always made me feel that way.”

“Why didn’t you say anything before?” Kenny asks, already aware of the answer.

He sees himself, high school-aged, bouncing on the balls of his feet by the bus stop because he’s psyched. He’s got some dumb story to tell Kyle. It doesn’t matter what the story is – what matters is that Kyle will laugh at it. And when he laughs, Kenny becomes electric inside.

He’s never as brilliant as he is when Kyle’s attention is zeroed in on him.

Then he catches sight of Stan’s car whizzing by, a Mustang he refurbished with his dad. There’s a head of red hair in the passenger side seat, bobbing animatedly.

They don’t see Kenny.

He’s not brilliant at all. He’s background noise. He’s fucking landscape.

“Homewrecking’s not my thing,” Clyde intones, unintentionally echoing what Kyle said about Stan a few weeks back. Carefully, he adds, “I don’t know – can’t tell – how Craig feels about me.”

“Give him time,” Kenny advises. He watches Kyle and Stan now, on the lift up ahead, their heads bowed close to each other. They’re laughing. They’re happy. One step closer to their perfect ending. He continues, around the lump in his throat, “Tweek turned his whole world upside down. Craig’s figuring out how to be upright again.”

Clyde brightens. “Yeah. You’re right. Persistence. That’s clutch.”

“Not…quite what I said, but keep the faith, buddy.”

Clyde knocks his board companionably against Kenny’s, and if the world was a fair place, it would mark the conclusion of a decent conversation.

Instead, because all odds are stacked against Kenny, the motion jostles him a little too hard.

Hard enough that he falls off the ski lift.

Hard enough that he flails through the air, hits packed snow, and breaks his damned neck.

Above him, before everything dims, he hears Kyle scream.

* * *

 

“Go fish.”

Fire dances sinuously in the abyssal void of Damien’s pupils. Kenny bites his tongue and draws a card.

It’s a two of hearts, the fifth two of hearts he’s picked since the original was paired and laid flat. Prior to each new fishing expedition, it mysteriously disappears from his hand, only to be found at the top of the card pile. Over and over again, in a hellish cycle.

Because Damien is a big, fat cheater.

He asks, “Do you have a Queen?”

Kenny sighs and hands over the Queen of Spades. “I really hate this game.”

Damien surveys him grimly. “I’m beginning to think you don’t enjoy our visits, either.”

Flames lick the ceiling and walls, carefully avoiding a framed photo of Damien and his father. The floor is blackened ash under their shoes. Kenny doesn’t take any of it in – he’s visited the pit so many times that it shares the comforting familiarity of his own bedroom. “The décor leaves something to be desired.”

“I bought throw pillows!” Damien protests, visibly offended, gesturing to the regal indigo cushions they’re propped against. “You’re such a princess.”

“You should talk, _my liege_ ,” Kenny drawls. “Do you have an eight?”

“Go fish. Antichrist, you’re in a mood.”

Kenny frowns at the array of his cards, a motley variety of regal figures wearing hearts and spades and clubs. And that fucking two. “Breaking your neck hurts.”

He rubs the offending part with his free hand.

His skin is ice cold, despite Hell’s charming temperature. Somewhere, on the upper crust of Earth, he’s lying in a drift of snow.

“Haven’t had the pleasure.” Damien scowls at him, rumpled, dark bangs falling into his eyes. “You’re not fooling me. You die painfully all the time.”

“Thanks for reminding me.”

“What crawled up your butt and died?”

Kenny sucks in his cheeks. He does not want to talk about Kyle and Stan with the son of Lucifer.

What he wants, what he really, really wants, is to be alive again. But if there’s anything he’s learned over the course of his life, it’s that his rebirths take time.

Grumpy, he shoots back, “None of your beeswax. Do you have a two?”

* * *

 

Kenny wakes up in the same place he died, which is generally how it goes.

He’s freezing, fine tremors in his limbs telling him that he needs to get somewhere warm before he finds himself a second exciting demise from hypothermia. Long lines of hoarfrost cling to his parka.

Kenny surveys the winter wonderland, ragged scrub jutting out of snowy dunes, and tries to discern how long he’s been gone. An hour or a day or a week – he can’t pin it down.

The chairlift whirs merrily overhead, the crisscross shadow of skis and snowboards blotting out the golden edges of the sun. Kenny’s toes curl inside his boots. He’s halfway up the mountain, and Stan’s board isn’t anywhere to be seen. He must have lost it in the fall.

The trudge down to the lodge takes forever, and Kenny’s shivering so hard by the time he arrives that he falls in the door. He has to crawl over to the fire crackling by the circle of couches, his blue lips scaring a group of eight year olds and their mom away.

His friends are nowhere to be seen.

It takes him an hour and a half to get enough warmth inside his bones that dragging himself up to Token’s place is tenable.

It’s late afternoon, a full day later. Monday. Kenny caught sight of the date on some teenager’s lock screen. He’s missed out on most of the weekend; everyone will head home in the morning.

He’s grumpy about that, and dying, and Damien being a complete sass-monster, and honestly, the last thing he needs to see when he arrives up at the cabin is his two best friends, rolling around in the snow.

Their bodies are locked together, soaking wet, Stan trying to shove a poorly packed snowball straight into Kyle’s mouth. Kyle bucks up against him, hip to hip, but Stan is unerringly determined. “Eat it, fucker.”

Kenny’s the one who swallows.

They’re right together. They’ve always been right together.

He can imagine them like this, without clothes, wrestling their tongues down each other’s throats instead of this- this complete mockery of what they actually want to be doing.

He walks past them without acknowledgment, the same way they haven’t acknowledged his absence.

They probably haven’t even noticed.

He must’ve imagined Kyle’s shout.

Except Kyle doesn’t let him wallow in that fantasy. He spits the snow out of his mouth and says, “Kenny?”

Stan jumps to his feet, chastened. Guilty. Kenny wonders what else he missed them doing, to make Stan look like that.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt.” He winces at how petty he sounds. “I mean. Carry on.” 

“Hey, no.” Kyle clambers up. “Are you okay?”

He grabs Kenny’s elbow when Kenny tries to move past him. “Kenny!”

Stan backs towards the door. “I should-“

Kyle nods, not even tracking his path when he leaves. He’s focused completely on Kenny, running his hands over the patch of blood at the collar of his parka, the slick coating of ice, leaves, and snow clinging to his pants. “I was worried about you.”

“You didn’t look worried.”

Kyle clucks his tongue like the meanest mother hen and says, “You don’t have to be a dick, Kenny.”

Kenny doesn’t apologize. “Rough night.”

“I didn’t know that…I didn’t know that still happened.”

“Like clockwork.”

It’s part of the reason he’s never left South Park.

It’s hard to find a job where you get paid time off for dying, especially when you can’t predict how long that time off will be. Thinking about it pisses him off.

He hates being stuck.

He hates the way Kyle is looking at him, all pity and concern.

He hates the way his heart is cringing, like a beat dog.

“I really was scared, Kenny. I didn’t know if you’d come back.”

“Oh, and that’s how you mourn me?” Kenny tries to walk past Kyle again, because he’s tired, and his neck is sore, and he’s irrationally upset about a lot of things at the moment.

“That’s not fair. Kenny.” Kyle grabs at him again, and it’s more than Kenny can take.

“Kyle, _don’t fucking push me_.”

Kyle doesn’t let go, expression turned steely, and Kenny can’t get free.

The whole world is painted in yellows and blues, frost and weakening sunlight jaundicing everything.

Everything, except Kyle. He’s living flame amid all the pastels, fuming mad, maybe, but also incredibly alive.

“How dare you?” Kyle’s eyes gouge into Kenny, hook beneath his ribs and pull him off-kilter.

 _How dare I_? Kenny thinks, but thinking has never really been his forte.

He slams Kyle back against the chalet wall, rough-hewn cedar that catches its scent in their hair, tangled with the wood smoke and snow.

Kyle breathes out sharp, a startled _oof_ rounding out of his lips.

He has snow caught in his damp curls, on his eyelashes, and, at the corner of his mouth.

So Kenny kisses it off of him.

Hard.

He devours Kyle’s mouth the way he’s wanted to for years, moving against him with this desperate adoration he didn’t even realize he had caged inside. He doesn’t care that he probably tastes like roadkill – Kyle’s mouth is minty fresh, mountain cool, and Kenny’s only got one shot at this.

He slots their bodies against each other, thigh between Kyle’s legs, and kisses Kyle the way he would if they were strangers, all teeth and tongue and clear intentions to take him to bed. Cupping the back of Kyle’s neck, he guides the kiss deeper, but it’s hard to do that when Kyle isn’t kissing him back.

Kenny paws at his ass, one last, wild play, and then his pulse settles.

He figures out what he just did.

He pulls back, half a beat. Kenny is an idiot, and Kyle, wide eyed, panting Kyle, is never going to talk to him again.

A choking sadness fills his lungs.

In lieu of an apology, he touches his lips to the curve of Kyle’s lips, gentle and daring, fear erasing his earlier roughness.

Only Kyle isn’t scared.

Kyle surges up onto his toes, hard and angry, his mouth claiming Kenny’s before Kenny can even fully turn into it. And Kenny knows a lot about kisses, how to hold someone, to touch someone. He knows how to breathe deep, like he’s swallowing the other person’s soul, to make them drunk on him, on what he gives them.

How to elicit the kind of response that he wants, which usually involves him getting off as soon as possible.

Yeah, sure. Kenny knows a lot about kisses.

But he doesn’t know a lot about kissing Kyle.

His tongue twists in Kyle’s mouth, groping open the front of his coat, and Kyle groans up into him, flinging his arms around Kenny’s shoulders. Kenny uses that leverage, scooping Kyle up by the thighs and pinning him back against Token’s chalet. He ruts into the space between Kyle’s legs and feels and answering hardness there, the thick line of Kyle’s cock outlined beneath his pants.

“Fuck,” Kenny chokes out, against Kyle’s mouth, and Kyle nods so hard that Kenny almost drops him.

“Don’t you even,” Kyle gasps, locking his knees at Kenny’s sides and pulling himself up, the length of him rubbing against Kenny, all delicious friction.

The slow roll of his pelvis drives Kenny a little insane. He runs his hands up to Kyle’s ass, kneading against the flesh there to get Kyle to thrust back, starting up this rhythm that builds and builds between them, dizzying.

They rock against each other out there, in the snow, with the fading sunlight and their friends a whole ten feet away. Kenny hears laughter from inside the house, Bebe’s high voice and the blare of the television, but around them trees rustle, snow crunches, and nothing else moves.

Kenny darts from Kyle’s lips to his jaw, his throat, and Kyle is fucking nibbling on his ear, which should be odd but mostly makes Kenny go molten. He’s got magma where his marrow should be, everything liquid and hot.

Even Kyle, he’s a furnace, the skin of his stomach just reachable, and more than once Kenny brushes his knuckles against the clothed silhouette of Kyle’s cock while exploring it.

He likes the way that Kyle moans when he does that, likes the thunder of his heart against his rib cage and the way he aches to get rid of their clothes, to get Kyle naked and wanting and screaming his name.

“We should-“

“We’re not talking about this right now,” Kyle warns breathily, hitching against Kenny in a long, slow grind that has him groaning.

“ _Kyle_ , shit.” His balls are tighter than a virgin’s asshole, which gets him thinking about assholes, and Kyle’s, and what he can do with it. He tries again. “Wasn’t- wasn’t gonna say that.”

Talking is the worst. Talking is the polar opposite of what Kenny wants to do right now. But he has no intention of coming in the pants he’s been wearing for two days, the underwear he fucking died in.

“Was gonna-“

Kyle directs Kenny’s mouth back to his, instructing, “ _Hush_.”

Kenny hates to admit it, but that’s about when he loses his train of thought.

He’s rock hard, throbbing, struck by taste of Kyle’s plush mouth, the shape of his ass, the way that every drag of his cock sends them both quaking. He’s lulled into a false sense of security by the way that Kyle’s massaging the back of his neck, his shoulder blades, by the quiver of Kyle’s thighs where they grip Kenny, and the soft shape of his mouth against the hinge of Kenny’s jaw. He grips the shape of Kyle’s hipbones, trying to keep him in place, but Kyle won’t stop moving. Pinned between the house and Kenny, he’s somehow leveraging the situation to climb Kenny him like a damn tree, doing anything he can to get their dicks closer, and Kenny’s intelligent enough to get that arguing about it is counterintuitive.

But he wants more. He needs more. He needs to feel Kyle’s skin flush up against his, to follow the treasure trail of ginger hair down to where it’s thickest, where Kyle’s thickest, to get his mouth up around him and-

Before Kenny can actually finish the thought, Kyle’s stiffening up against him. His head lolls back against the side of the chalet and he exhales, “ _Kenny_.”

It’s the most incredible sight Kenny’s ever seen. “Did you just-“

“Shut up.” Kyle commands, dropping his feet back down to the ground. Eyes blazing, he begins fumbling down the front of Kenny’s pants, which, it’s not like Kenny’s exactly fighting him off. More than a little awed, Kenny stands there and lets Kyle jerk him off, quick and ruthless. His palm skids across the shape of Kenny’s dick, tugging until Kenny’s muttering, “Fuck, Kyle, what-“

And he’s losing it too. It’s not his proudest moment.

Kyle waits until Kenny stops shaking to work his hand free. He lifts his palm and licks it, the way that Kenny licked chocolate off himself a few nights back, and Kenny might actually faint from how sexy that is. “Um.”

Kyle grins up at him, chapped from the wind and the cold, lips blood-red and swollen from kissing. “Welcome back to the land of the living, I guess?”

“Is that what this was? I’m glad you’re not dead sex?”

Kenny goes from elated to downtrodden in three seconds flat. Something swoops in his chest, a warm, sick thing that makes everything taste less like mint and more like bile.

The corners of Kyle’s lips tick down. “Do we have to label it?”

“Erm. Yes. Yes, we have to label it.” Kenny wraps his hands around himself, unable to keep from pressing the issue. He’s trembling. “You can’t have sex with me and not label it.”

“Lots of people have sex with you. Our community service mentor had sex with you, in the youth center pool.”

It doesn’t wound him, because it’s true. He can’t count how many people he’s slept with. But, “Lots of people aren’t my best friends.”

That’s where the difference is. How can Kyle not see that?

Kyle winces. “I don’t know, Kenny. You’re my boyfriend.”

“Fake boyfriend,” Kenny corrects, because he can’t help himself.

“Fake boyfriend. I’m happy to see you. I thought…I thought I might not get the chance to, again…” Kyle blinks at him, clearly heading towards an existential crisis.

He never was the kind of guy who did _casual_ , in high school or college. He always fell fast and forever. And Kenny isn’t sure what to do, because it doesn’t look like Kyle’s intending to fall for him any time soon, fast _or_ forever.

He’s not good enough. Again.

Kenny threads his fingers through his hair, for lack of a persuasive argument about why they should pursue this discussion, but gets it caught in a matted tangle. “Listen, I need a shower. Badly. If you want to forget this happened, we’re cool.”

He’s done that drill with millions of people. It’s rote.

“I don’t want to forget it,” Kyle replies, clearly scandalized by the offer.

He’s got sex hair, already mussed from his snowball battle with Stan, and everything about him is so edible that Kenny wants to reenact what just happened. But he won’t, because he can read how much Kyle wishes it hadn’t.

It’s there on his face, plain as day, written in the anxiety is those jewel-green eyes of his.

So Kenny says in the least lovesick voice he can muster, “No worries. We don’t have to cuddle. When you look up _who to make bad decisions with_ in the town directory, my name’s at the top of the list.”

“It wasn’t like that,” Kyle insists, with no conviction whatsoever. He doesn’t want to be the bad guy, here.

That’s okay.

“Kyle.” Kenny pastes on a counterfeit smile, all while making a beeline for the cabin door. “It was like that for me.”

* * *

 

Stan narrows his eyes into teeny, tiny slits when Kenny waltzes into the chalet, taking in his hair and bruised mouth, but everyone else accepts it as a byproduct of his untimely demise. Craig gives him a high five, and Clyde a perfunctory cheer, but otherwise, his reemergence goes unremarked.

Kenny gets himself a blistering hot shower and some clean jeans, and does not look at the purpling hickey on his neck in the mirror. He goes down to the kitchen and eats some cold pizza, which tastes like ass but is all that Token has stocked up that doesn’t require cooking.

He spends half an hour reading one of Christophe’s weird books – a dog-eared paperback of Waiting for Godot – in companionable silence with Bebe, who is paging through a trashy romance novel with bright eyes. She makes him chamomile tea and doesn’t ask him any questions about the afterlife, so Kenny counts it a good way to spend the evening.

In the other room, Stan, Kyle, Craig, Clyde, and Token are sharing a few six packs, playing Mario Party, and generally causing a ruckus. Stan yelps something particularly loud, and is answered by Kyle chortling. Bebe lifts her gaze and says, “ _Boys_.”

“We’re all the same.”

“All of you,” she agrees, wry. She lowers the book into her lap. “Kenny. Can you tell me what’s wrong with Stan?”

Kenny freezes. “Wrong?”

She places a hand over his. “I know my fiancé. I know when he’s being a shifty bastard. And I know it has something to do with you and Kyle. What’s going on?”

“This sounds like something you should…ask Stan.”

“I’m asking you.” Her nails cut into his knuckles.

“Uh.”

“Kenny.”

“Erm.”

“Kenny.”

“Ah- I. I. Uh.”

“Kenny!”

“Stan!” Kenny hollers, frightened by the homicide in Bebe’s eyes.

 _How could you_? She mouths at him when Stan comes bursting into the kitchen. _Traitor_.

“Stan, Bebe wants to talk to you. Without me here.” Kenny bolts, before either of them can stop him. He cannot get out of this house soon enough.

He tries to hide out in his bedroom, but he’s conveniently forgotten that he’s sharing. With Kyle. Who he really doesn’t want to see, currently. But Kyle doesn’t respect that, bursting into the room without knocking. “What happened down there?”

Kenny, who had heard his heavy footsteps approaching, had whipped out his phone right in time. He flashes his Sugar Babies dot com profile at Kyle. Serenely, he answers, “No idea.”

“You’ve got no idea why Bebe is railing at Stan right now?”

Kenny flinches. “She’s really reaming him out?”

“Really really.” Wanly, Kyle whispers, “You don’t think that he’d be dumb enough to tell her, right?”

“Uh.”

“Kenny?”

“Um.”

“Kenny! What did you _do_?”

“I didn’t tell her anything, I swear!”

“But she knows?”

“She knows…that something’s off. With Stan. I don’t know if Stan told her.”

He won’t be surprised if Stan did. For all of Stan’s faults, he has honor, when he needs it most.

Kyle frowns, evidently thinking the same thing. “Maybe we should leave. Before Bebe…”

“Murders us?”

“That.” Kyle points at him. Then he deflates. “But how will we get all our stuff downstairs?”

Kenny considers, his heart flipping in his chest. There’s no way out. “I think we’re in this for the long haul, buddy.”

Kyle turns the conversation on him. “So we are?”

“What?”

“Buddies? You’re not thinking about dropping me?”

“Kyle. I wouldn’t throw this away-” He gestures between them, the bed and the doorway, doing his best not to sound lovelorn, “-because I’ve seen you come.”

“But.” Kyle bites his lips, haunted by the same uncertainties he’s carried with him since he first came back to South Park. Kenny misses Kyle’s courage, the way he always hated backing down. And maybe Kyle senses that, because he squares his shoulders and asks, “Did you mean it?”

“Mean what?”

“That you went along with it, with us-“ He waves hand towards the window, and towards his crotch. “Because that’s what you do?”

“I don’t understand what you’re asking,” Kenny replies, even though he understands perfectly what Kyle is asking.

Kyle glowers at him. “I had my hand down your boxers, Kenny.”

“Yeah. That was fun.” Kyle keeps glowering, so Kenny exclaims, “What, don’t look at me! I didn’t start that. That one was all you.”

He doesn’t dissuade Kyle a single bit. “Why did you kiss me, Kenny?”

“Do I need a reason? I thought that was part of our deal. We’ve been kissing for a few weeks, now.”

“Not like that. No one was watching.”

Kenny could lie, and say that he saw Stan peeping through the front window.

He could tell the truth, and say he did it because he wanted to.

He chooses the middle road. “Have you given any thought to what you’re going to do if Stan is telling Bebe down there? What if there’s no home left to wreck? You could be Mrs. Stan Marsh. You could go to Canada!”

“Fine, change the subject.” Kyle crosses his arms. “Be that way.”

“Thank you, I will.” Kenny plops back against the bed, staring at the ceiling in the hopes that Kyle will take the hint and go away. He’s already tallying up what he’ll report to Wendy on their next call, if Stan’s engagement goes kaput.

He does not expect to find himself shifting over when Kyle comes to sit next to him. “I’m a mess.”

“Hot mess,” Kenny replies automatically, fond despite himself.

“Maybe. And you’ve been here for me. In a big way.”

“Sugar, don’t get maudlin.” He reaches up to chuck Kyle gently under the chin. “It doesn’t suit you.”

Kyle catches his wrist. “Is that your way of telling me to shut up?”

“Would I do that?”

“Yes. Absolutely.” Kyle turns his face into Kenny’s palm, kissing the pale blue path of a vein. Kenny’s breath catches. “Kenny.”

“Kyle,” Kenny replies, measured. Exhausted.

He does not give anything away. Not even when Kyle releases him, his hand falling limply back to his side, and leans in close.

His breath ghosts over Kenny’s lips, and Kenny pretends that he’s made of stone. He won’t move. He won’t flinch.

Kyle breathes out and in, and out.

Kyle asks, “Are you still in love with me?”


	4. Chapter 4

The ride back to South Park is possibly the awkwardest thing that Kenny has ever lived through.

In part because they have to take Bebe, who refuses to step foot in Stan’s car after their epic fight on Monday evening. She slinks into the driver’s side back seat with the kind of aura that would unsettle a serial killer. It certainly unsettles Kyle, who is utterly clueless about how many details she’s equipped with, and whether those details might spur her on to causing him bodily harm.

He swerves all over the road because he’s too busy watching the rearview mirror.

They’ve lost Craig to Stan’s vehicle, and his custom sound system. Fucking Judas. Who is supposed to stop Bebe’s knives? Or guns? Or, well, it actually doesn’t matter.

Craig’s useless in a fight.

Of course, the other part of that black mood that’s settled over the moon roof is that Kyle asked Kenny if he was in love with him. And Kenny – mature, responsible adult that he is –yawned, told Kyle he was tired, and promptly pulled the comforter over his face.

Mistakes were made. He sees that now.

It didn’t end there.

Kyle’s a stubborn ass. He refused to evacuate the room, talking through Kenny’s cocoon for at least an hour. At first, it was a leading monologue about how it would be okay, if Kenny felt that way.

_No, it wouldn’t_.

Then, when Kenny was steadfast in pretending to snore, Kyle launched into a blow-by-blow description of the plot of one of the new Lord of the Rings movies. In excruciating detail.

That’s when Kenny fell asleep for real.

He woke up the next morning snuggled into Kyle’s side, one arm wrapped across Kyle’s warm midsection.

It’s not the first time they shared a bed – they had more than one sleepover in high school. But it was the first time they’d done it since Kyle had his hand unceremoniously wrapped around Kenny’s dick, and that was enough to make Kenny flail his way onto the floor.

Bleary-eyed, Kyle strained over the side of the bed and asked, “D’you wanna talk _now_?”

Kenny did not.

Fast forward to the car, and the quiet, and Bebe seething in the backseat.

She has no idea why Kyle or Kenny are set on simmer, but she’s got enough poisonous rage back there to really put their problems in perspective.

Kenny doesn’t want to die again, so soon.

He tells Bebe this, and she slaps him upside the head for his efforts.

“Ow!” Kenny reaches back, rubbing the palm-sized lump he earned. “Geez, sorry I said anything.”

“Oh, did that hurt?” Bebe snaps, all blonde ringlets and fury. “Let me tell you, Kenny. What _hurts_ is having the guy you’ve been with for _three years_ tell you there’s someone else.”

Kyle begins to scoot down his seat, like it will somehow get him out of Bebe’s trajectory.

“What hurts is sending out your _Save the Dates_ , and then having to inform all your friends and family the wedding’s off!”

“Yeah, that sounds like it would suck,” Kenny mutters darkly, watchful for another strike.

“What _hurts_ is- is-“ And then, to Kenny and Kyle’s abject horror, Bebe bursts into tears.

Neither of them have seen her cry since her dog passed in sixth grade. Kenny didn’t know she was still _capable_ of it.

“Kenny,” Kyle hisses, like he’s the girl-whisperer and can magically fix this. Kenny shakes his head, helpless. “Do something!”

They spend another thirty seconds flapping and gesturing wildly at each other until Kenny sucks it up and makes a play for Bebe’s wrist, dangling limply in her lap.

“Hey. I love Stan. But he’s a dumbass.” Kenny squeezes her hand. “A major, major dumbass. He shouldn’t have done that to you. You don’t deserve to be treated that way.”

Kyle nods vigorously, too effused with shame and guilt to actually agree out loud.

Which, Kenny figures that while they’re here, they should clarify some points.

“Did Stan, um. Did he say who the other person is?”

Bebe shakes her head, crying frustratedly, “He wouldn’t tell me.”

“Oh. Er. That’s probably for the best, then.”

“The best? I’m going to find out who that cunt is and rip her _freaking head_ off.”

Kyle audibly gulps.

Serene, Kenny pats their entwined knuckles. “That’s a perfectly healthy response.”

Bebe sobs.

Kyle sinks even lower in his seat, going, going, going down. They hit the gravelly tread of a rumble strip before Kyle can regain control of himself.

Needless to say, the ride does not get any less awkward.

* * *

 

Dropping Bebe off at her mother’s place, rather than the apartment she shares with Stan, doesn’t lift Kenny or Kyle’s spirits. They drive in uncomfortable quietude along streets lined blue-white with hoarfrost until they reach the train tracks, and Kenny’s house, at which point he’s desperate to fly solo.

He tells Kyle, “She’s going to sic her bodyguards on Stanley. We might have to send his mother flowers.”

“Hold your horses on the funeral arrangements,” Kyle counsels, putting the car in park. “Stan’s wily.”

“Stan’s _lucky_ ,” Kenny corrects, because he is. Smoking hot fiancée, career that literally consists of _talking_ , nice digs, and a best friend that would go to the actual end of the Earth for him? Stan’s got it all.

Kenny tries not to resent him for it.

His hand gropes for the door, ready to flee.

It’s not unlocked, and he reaches for the button in the center of the console, but Kyle smacks his hand over it first. “Wait.”

“Are you holding me hostage?” Kenny questions, incredulous.

“Yes.”

“Unlock the door, Kyle.”

“No.”

“ _Unlock_ the _door_ , Kyle.”

Kyle turns his upper torso towards Kenny, giving him his full, undivided attention. “Not until we talk about what happened up there.”

“The hand job, or the part where you spoiled the ending to a movie I was looking forward to?”

“It’s Lord of the Rings! They all end the same!” Shrewdly, he pokes Kenny in the side. “I so knew you were listening.”

“I can neither confirm nor deny.” Kenny crosses his arms, pale blue eyes narrowed. “What do you want to talk about? You want a play by play of how you shot your load fully clothed?” 

Kyle has the good sense to look embarrassed, but humiliation doesn’t get him to back down. It never has. “Kenny. If you have feelings for me, then what we’re doing isn’t fair to you.”

“If I have feelings for you?” Kenny demands, his outrage finally reaching full boil. “Dude, I wasn’t alone up on that mountain. You were rubbing against me like a fricking cat in heat.”

“You kissed me.”

“You put _fake_ kissing in the _fake_ dating contract! I didn’t want that,” he reminds him. “That was all you.”  

“You already know what I’m going to say,” Kyle retorts, frustrated. “You know that kiss was fucking real.”

They’ve had this argument. Last night. It’s all full circle. And Kenny is so, so tired of fighting.

He deflates. “Fine. I kissed you. But you kissed me back.”

Kyle nods, accepting this small amount of culpability. “No one has kissed me like that in...I want to say a really long time, but honestly? No one’s ever kissed me like that.”

“So…” Kenny seizes on the opportunity for deflection, wiggling his eyebrows. “it was good for you?”

“It was spectacular for me.” Kyle chuckles then, low and sad, and Kenny wants to kiss the broken smirk from his lips. “I got swept up.”

Kenny does not kiss Kyle. He knows what this is. That’s why he’s avoided it so dang hard.

This is the conversation where he doesn’t get the guy.

Ruefully, he tells Kyle, “You swept me right along with you.”

Kyle almost looks like he’s willing to leave it at that.

He doesn’t. “Tell me why you kissed me.”

Moment of truth. Kenny’s lungs draw tight. “Because I wanted to, Kyle.”

“You wanted to?”

“Yes! Is that the answer you’re looking for?” He turns fully, meeting Kyle’s gaze as earnestly as he can manage. “I wanted to, because you’re gorgeous, and charming, and you make me feel like I’m gorgeous and charming, which is probably why I’ve been head over heels in love with you for oh, ninety-three years.”

The confession explodes from his mouth before he can rein it back, but once it does, he’s free. He doesn’t have to guard any more goddamned secrets, or make believe that he isn’t splintering inside.

Kyle doesn’t move, doesn’t say anything, and Kenny continues, “I thought I was over it, but you had to come back, didn’t you? You couldn’t be satisfied with the occasional Chanukah visit?”

“I mean,” Kyle carefully articulates. “I visit for Thanksgiving and Arbor Day, too.”

“Yeah, that last one is still fucking weird.” Kenny’s voice is gruff, strained. He isn’t sure whether to laugh at the lame joke or to break a window and book it out of the car.

Anything to avoid the sympathy in Kyle’s features.

He hasn’t got a strategy for this. With anyone else, he’d be able to talk his way out, or avoid it, or frankly, leave.

But nobody else knows him like Kyle.

Who says, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“I knew what I was getting myself into.”

“Sure, but I’m the genius, remember? I should’ve been smarter. I should’ve protected you from me.” Kyle slumps back in his chair, squeezing the steering wheel tightly. Kenny watches the white skin of his knuckles while he says, “I’m a gigantic cocktease, aren’t I?”

“You didn’t tease yesterday.”

The tip of Kyle’s nose burns bright red. “No. I guess I didn’t.”

Kenny spreads his legs, trying to use his body language to appear lazy, unconcerned. He’s not fooling Kyle, and he certainly isn’t fooling himself. His voice cracks when he asks, “What are you going to do now?”

“Soldier up. Be brave.” Kyle shakes his head. “I can’t hide from my problems forever.”

“You can try.” It’s a half-hearted quip.

Kyle gives Kenny the tiniest, most gratifying grin. He says, “Fourth grade me would be ashamed.”

“I don’t think so. You never were fond of change.” He drums his fingers against his knee, and then asks the question that’s been bugging him, the one he already knows the answer to. “Are you going to go see Stan?”

“I have to, don’t I? He and Bebe are donezo, and with them, my entire reason for not wanting to try.” Kyle winces after he says it, like there’s caution tape wrapped around the subject of him and Stan. “I’m sorry.”

“What did I tell you about apologizing?”

“That it’s what you do in polite society?”

“Well. Good luck.” Kenny pushes the unlock button on the car, and this time, Kyle doesn’t stop him. He unfolds himself from the passenger seat, and stretches, the sunshine pooling on his bare belly.

It doesn’t warm him in the least.

The window rolls down behind him, and Kyle calls, “Will you be okay?”

“Me? I’m a survivor.” He smiles at Kyle, all teeth, and Kyle wavers.

“I guess I should go tell my mom I still have all my fingers and toes.”

“No, you should go to Stan’s now,” Kenny advises, arms propped on the car. “Bebe’s not at their apartment, and if he went home instead – it’s Tuesday morning. Randy’ll be at work-“

“Or the bar,” Kyle interrupts.

“Hooray for semi-functional alcoholism.” Kenny’s mouth quirks. He’s weirdly happy for Kyle, even if his heart feels like one enormous stretch of cracked asphalt. “Love’s for chumps, Broflovski. But go get him anyway.”

Kyle mirrors his expression, semi-sad and semi-elated, like he’s at the beginning of something.

Because he is – he’s got a whole new future ahead of him.

But for Kenny, this is an ending. He trudges inside his house, barely missing an icy patch on the front steps, and ignores his sister when she asks how his weekend went. He makes it into his room, onto his threadbare sheets.

He curls up under his comforter, fully clothed, not thinking about pillow forts or the way that his blankets still smell like Kyle’s froofy hair conditioner.

In fact, Kenny does his best not to think of anything at all.

* * *

 

He’s got an early shift at the Kum & Go, and he has to get up at the ass crack of dawn. South Park is bathed in a pale orange sunrise, creamsicle colors that remind Kenny of summer and being a kid. He walks the half mile to work bathed in that light, everything crisping to a soft gold before night relinquishes the sky completely. By the time he reaches work, overhead it’s a robin’s egg blue that means spring is on the way, or at least a warmer day or two.

Kenny shivers into his parka and hopes those days hurry up. He’s frigid, right down to his bones.

Under the red and white banner that reads the Kum & Go’s logo, Kenny can see the eyeball-blasting white lights of the store, and hopes Craig has the heater running. He’s got big plans to stretch out behind the counter with the last of Christophe’s discarded paperbacks, a torn copy of Big Sur, of all things, because apparently Christophe harbored a secret passion for road trips and self-discovery.

Kerouac isn’t Kenny’s gig, but hell, he’s bored and sad, and why not? He can’t finish Waiting for Godot. He has a feeling Godot never shows up, and Kenny doesn’t need that kind of negativity in his life. Not anymore.

He pushes the front door in, glass cold, even through his mittens. 

He calls out, “Tucker, what’s good?”

And then he shrieks like a little girl.

Few things have ever scarred Kenny the way that witnessing Craig cradling Clyde’s big bare ass ever will.

They’re balanced on the red, vinyl stool, Craig mercifully clothed, as far as Kenny can tell, all skinny jeans and rumpled black shirt, while Clyde is missing a whole lot down under. He’s straddling Craig’s hips, all thick muscle from his football days, and he has Craig’s hands wrapped into firm flesh, tips of his long fingers edging up to…ugh.

Kenny gags in the back of his throat.

“Christ on a pogo stick, what is wrong with you two?” He cries, palm flying to cover up this thing that he will be seeing in nightmares for years to come.

Behind the veil of skin-toned darkness, he hears an unmanly yelp, and a rustle that means Clyde’s fallen on that perky ass of his. Reluctantly, Kenny scissors his fingers apart to peek, because might as well check out what Donovan’s packing. He’s got a reputation to uphold here.

Unfortunately, Craig’s already thrown Clyde his jeans, and he’s glaring at Kenny like he’s the one with the audacity to be waving his dick around in public.  

Kenny bites back a combination of delight and repulsion and asks, “What would you’ve done if I was a customer?”

“No one in this town wakes up before six a.m.” Craig shoots back, refusing to be ashamed of himself. It’s something Kenny really appreciates about the guy.

He also appreciates that Craig seems…better. Healthier. The big, dark circles under his eyes are as light as Kenny ever remembers seeing them, and the knife edges of his cheekbones frame a face that isn’t quite so gaunt. The mountain wind and actual sunlight did him some good.

The sex is probably also helping.

Kenny tries to peer over the counter while Clyde shimmies into his pants, but all he gets is a flash of thigh and Craig and Clyde both flipping him off, chorusing, “Fuck you.” 

With a mixture of embarrassment and pleasure, Clyde asks Craig, “You got this?”

Craig frowns up at him, his annoyance trickling into something that is almost a smile. He touches Clyde’s arm and says, “I can handle this loser.”

Clyde darts in, dropping a sweet, chaste kiss on Craig’s lips. Then he flips Kenny off one more time and brushes past him, out the store.

Kenny sidles his way around the checkout counter and up into Craig’s space. “So. That’s a development.”

“I’m getting back on the horse,” Craig says, deadpan.

Kenny nods, still trying to rid the big, bright imprint of Clyde’s ass from his corneas.

“TMI.” He hesitates, then adds, “But for clarity’s sake, how was it?”

“The horse?”

Kenny nods.

“I think I’ll visit the stable again.”

Craig’s smile stretches wide enough that Kenny can guess all the details. “But. We need to stop with this metaphor.”

Craig shrugs. “I like horses.”

“That’s between you and your therapist.”

“I don’t have a therapist.”

“No, but you’re getting a gift certificate for one next Christmas.”

“Please,” Craig scoffs. “We get the same paycheck, and it ain’t therapy money.”

Kenny beams, albeit tiredly. “I think Cartman took a few psychiatry classes.”

At that, Craig goes pale enough that Kenny forgives him for the sight of Clyde’s bare ass. “Fucker. You wouldn’t.”

“I have no limits,” Kenny replies serenely. He’s really glad someone is getting a happy ending.

He wishes it was him.

“You’re fucking mercenary.” Craig stops, visibly struggling with how to say what he needs to say. Finally, he comes out with it. “Are you okay, man?”

“What do you mean?”

Craig shifts, uncomfortable with the entire concept of a heart to heart. He grits his teeth and says, in a rush, “If you say you’re cool, I’ll believe you.”

“I’m cool. Obviously.” Kenny arches a single eyebrow for emphasis, because he knows Craig can’t and it drives him insane.

“Obviously.” And normally, Craig would leave it at that. He’s all about the smoking and drinking and wallowing; the simple life. But this time, he lets the words tumble out. “Just. You’ve got a bad habit of acting like you see everything and don’t give a shit about anything, right? Except now you look like someone kicked your sister in the girl-nuts.”

“Karen could handle it,” Kenny remarks, his fingernails digging into the side of his thigh, soft-worn denim and a bruise forming underneath.

Unconvinced, Craig ventures, “So you’re good?”

“I’m good. I’m great.” Kenny lifts one shoulder, turning to hang his park on the hook they have waiting. It misses, falling onto the filthy floor, but he doesn’t bother trying to pick the damn thing up. “I’m lying.”

The tension floods from Craig’s shoulders. “You don’t say? I never bought into this whole mystical know-it-all thing you have going.”

“People think I’m mystical? Shucks. We could’ve run side scams. Tarot cards, or some shit.”

“Put a pin in that for later.” Craig pauses, and then sweeps a bunch of shit off the counter, onto the floor and Kenny’s parka. It includes Christophe’s copies of Big Sur, with the gentle waves and soaring cliffs on the cover. Kenny’s never seen anything like that, in real life. He stares at it as he hops up onto the newly cleared face. “Talk to me, man.”

Kenny shifts uneasily. He doesn’t know what to say.

So Craig helps him. “I feel guilty.”

“What?”

Kenny thought they were talking about him, but it looks like they’re bouncing back to Craig’s favorite subject: Craig.

“About Clyde.” Craig hunches over the counter, elbows propped above the peeling laminate where they have instructions to the pumps. “I keep wondering what Tweak would think.”

“You can’t do that to yourself, man.”

“I know that. But I guess it’s true what they say, right? You never forget your first love.” Then, very deliberately, Craig lifts a single eyebrow.

“You’ve been practicing!” Kenny accuses.

To which Craig smirks and says, “Suck it, McCormick.”

Kenny holds up his hands, conceding. “I bow to the master. And Kyle isn’t my first love.”

“You are fooling no one with that tune.”

“I’ve loved a lot of people,” Kenny objects. “I loved that girl in eighth grade. The one with the-“

He makes a movement to indicate the girl’s rack, and Craig shakes his head. “Sex isn’t love, dude.”

“I know that.”

“Doesn’t hurt, though,” Craig says, with such fondness that Kenny knows he’s thinking about Clyde.

“Kyle and I were never…we weren’t actually dating.”

Craig’s mouth turns downward. “Looked like you were to me.”

“Yeah, but it was for show,” Kenny explains, pinched and tense and trying to make Craig _understand_. “For Stan’s benefit.”

Craig stares.

Craig stares some more.

Craig says, “That’s the dumbest fucking thing I’ve ever heard.”

“I’ve done dumber,” Kenny replies, weary of all this bullshit. He crosses his arms and waits for Craig’s verdict.

Which is, anticlimactically, not a verdict at all. Craig asks, “And now you guys are…?”

“Kaput.” It hurts to admit out loud, in this bone-aching way that makes Kenny want to curl up somewhere and hide. But that’s not his style. “Can we talk about something else? When did you and Donovan decide to get all hot and heavy?”

Craig purses his lips, keeping all those secrets inside. He says, “I’m sorry about you and Kyle.”

“I don’t want to hear that. _I_ want to forget it ever happened.”

“Okay.” Craig claps him on the shoulder and rises from the stool. He lets Kenny slip off the counter to replace him, the cracked vinyl a hell of a lot softer.

Although, “Your bare ass was not on this at any point, correct?”

Craig snorts, but doesn’t dignify that with a response. Kenny wails, “That’s unsanitary, man!”

He waits until Craig is out in the parking lot, greeting the new day, to pick everything up off the floor, but after that, he’s at a loss.

Craig was right. No one in this whole damn town wakes up before six.

Kenny spends a few minutes scrolling through Sugarbabies Dot Com, but there’s nothing new or interesting, so he puts his phone away.

He can’t figure out what to do.

A week ago, he would have called Kyle, waking him from his cocoon of self-pity, but now, he assumes Kyle is with Stan. And Kenny isn’t ready to face that yet.

He’s not sure if he’ll be ready to face that any time in the foreseeable future.

But that’s a problem for the Kenny of tomorrow. For now, he kicks his foot against the underside of the cubicle, announcing, “I’m a fucking moron.”

Then he cracks open Big Sur, and reads about someone else’s woebegone, goopy feelings for a change.

* * *

 

“You’ve moped for a week,” Kevin states, wintry eyes narrowed. “Time to find your ball sac.”

“I’m not letting you anywhere near my nuts, Kev,” Kenny retorts, muffled by his pillow.

He has not been moping. He’s been working, and relaxing after work, and occasionally cooking Kevin, Karen, and their parents some real kick ass mac and cheese. Which means that Kevin intruding on this one, small moment of pitiable wallowing is really uncalled for.

Kevin does not appreciate that.

Kevin punches him in the small of his back, and Kenny groans, rolling over. “The fuck?”

“The only reason mom lets her three grown-ass children live at home is because we have lives. You’re shattering that illusion for her.”

“Weird how mom’s not the one _hitting_ me. Dick.”

“Get up, we’re going to the club.”

“Oh, hell to the no.”

When Kevin says club, he means the Peppermint Hippo, a place Kenny regards with childlike joy, and which Kevin ruins for him every damn time they go together.

“Come on,” Kevin wheedles.

“No.” Kenny folds his arms over the soft parts of his stomach and glowers at a stain on his ceiling. “Don’t you have a girlfriend?”

“What’s that got to do with anything?” Kevin asks, genuinely puzzled.

“Pig.”

“I was going to invite her,” Kevin says. “Long as she can find someone to watch the kid.”

His kid, but Kenny has only interacted with the brat a handful of times. Kevin is pretty protective of him, for all kinds of reasons that probably have a lot to do with how Kevin and Kenny and Karen were raised. Kenny doesn’t begrudge him that.

“Fine. Whatever. If I agree to go to the stupid club will you give me five stupid minutes all to myself?”

Kevin eyes him critically. “You forgot to call yourself stupid, stupid.”

“Get the fuck out.”

Kevin goes, but only to grab the keys to their dad’s truck. Then they’re hauling butt down to the Hippo, where even the bright red door and blacked out windows can’t lift Kenny’s spirits, to Kevin’s honest dismay.

“Alright, you little fuck, what the ‘ell is wrong with you?”

Kenny rolls his eyes and climbs out of the truck. “We’re not having a heart to heart in the parking lot of a strip joint, Kev.”

“Why not?”

His brother: simultaneously simple-minded, sweet, and inappropriate, all at the same time. Kenny fiddles with the buckle of his seat belt, clicking it open and closed. He says, “I got in a fight with Stan.”

It’s the truth. He did fight with Stan.

Weeks ago, but whatever, Kevin is a nosy bastard and Kenny doesn’t owe him a real explanation.

Except Kevin hums sympathetically. “’Bout a girl?”

“What makes you say that?” Kenny cuts his eyes to the left, pale blue to pale blue. “Stan’s engaged.”

“Stan’s never been great at, what’s that word?” Kevin scratches a patch of beard under his jaw, the growth marred by a crisscross scar. “Commitment.”

Huh. Kenny never realized Kevin paid enough attention to his friends to know what, precisely, Stan is or isn’t good at.

He agrees, “Sure. About a girl.”

“Knew it!” Kevin crows. “That boy attracts ladies like flies on shit.”

“What. A. Visual.” Kenny drawls, bunching his fingers into small, ineffective balls to keep from hitting something. Anything. His brother’s irritating face, maybe.

A bit wistfully, Kevin adds, “To have girl problems like that.”

“Biddies love Stan,” Kenny concurs, because wow has this conversation gone off the rails. “Can we visit the strippers yet? They miss me.”

“Ain’t no one missing your scrawny ass.” Kevin ruffles his hand through Kenny’s hair, which is obnoxious. Less obnoxious is when he says, “I wouldn’t worry about that girl of yours.”

“What makes you say that?”

“If she likes you, and Stan, clearly there’s, er- a divide in taste going on.”

Succinctly, Kenny sounds out, “ _Thanks_.”

“Nah, I mean-“ Kevin flounders about for words, figuring out what he means. He’s always been like that – careful, to the point of seeming slow. Maybe because from a young age, he’s watched their parents, throwing insults like knives and never really giving a damn about where they land. He tries again, “I mean, Stan gets everything so easily. You work hard, kiddo.”

He hasn’t called Kenny _kiddo_ in years, since long before his own bundle of joy arrived, since Kenny was ten and demanded that he stop. It gets Kenny out of his own head, gets him looking at his brother for real.

Gruffly, he replies, “Glad you think so.”

“I know so. ‘Sides, that Marsh kid is odd. He’ll probably try to sell her some affirmations or something. Drive her right into your arms.”

Kenny doubts Stan’s capable of doing anything to drive Kyle away, not now, but Kevin doesn’t need to know that. He suggests, “Strippers?”

And Kevin goes with it, pep talk over, walking Kenny to the front door of the Hippo, where Kenny can get lost in a wonderland of breasts for exactly ten minutes before he notices Kevin groping himself in public.

Every fucking time, man.

* * *

 

Kenny’s stacking sodas in the fridge at the Kum & Go because occasionally, he works.

The low hum of the fluorescent lights and the soft hush of falling snow are the only thing he’s got keeping him company. He turned off the store’s radio the second he arrived, silencing a wailing country song that Craig was singing along to.

His fingers are cold, condensation against aluminum, and Kenny is about to switch over to restocking a carton of Gatorade when the _hee-haw_ of the door chimes. Kenny glances up at the round mirror mounted in the far corner of the store to see a familiar neon green coat, dusted with snowflakes that don’t so much as bother to melt in the icy station’s interior.

Red curls peek out from the faux fur hood of Kyle’s parka while he stomps his feet, considerately, against the Kum & Go’s dirty black welcome mat. “Hello?”

“Back here!” Kenny calls, remaining crouched beside the blues, red, and yellows of sports drinks.

It’s the first time he’s seen Kyle since he got dropped off after the ski weekend, and he needs a second to brace himself. Except in the second, he catches sight of himself in the glass of the fridge, mussed blond hair and a wild-eyed surprise, ragged rust-orange shirt sleeves rolled up his forearms. He’s no one’s idea of a missed opportunity, currently unsexy and blue collar as hell.

Kyle comes around a rack of potato chips and beef jerky, his sneakers stuttering to a stop behind Kenny.

“Admiring the view?” Kenny quips, regretting it almost immediately. It isn’t _his ass_ Kyle’s interested in.

He straightens up, doing his best to look casual, but suspects he’s halfway to a grimace. “Look what the cat dragged in.”

“I know,” Kyle replies, apologetic, but droll. “Long time, no see.”

Might as well get this over with.

Kenny affects his best friend demeanor, trying to cover up how every inch of him wants to be as far from Kyle and his soon-to-be-apparent effusive happiness as possible. “How went things with Stan? Epic first love, prophesized by the stars on all that?”

“It was…anticlimactic.” Kyle says, eyes shadowed, hollow.

No trace of effusive happiness in sight.

Kenny’s initial speechlessness quickly fades into annoyance. “Oh come on, it couldn’t have been that bad! Bebe writes fucking odes to Stan’s man-thing every time she gets trashed.”

“Maybe.” Kyle grins wryly. “I didn’t let it go that far.”

That’s…not what Kenny expected to hear, quite frankly. He raises his eyebrows. “Sounds like you’re missing out.”

“Trust me,” Kyle responds, stepping further into the dim, gray light filtering in from the snowy day. He actually doesn’t look so bad. The darkness previously gracing his face was merely a trick of the light. “I’m kicking myself, too. But. Uh. I don’t think it’s going to work out. Stan and I.”

“Sorry to hear that, bud,” Kenny replies, blithe, because how the hell else is he supposed to react? This isn’t exactly how he saw his day going.

“It is what it is.” Kyle pushes his shoulders back, gearing up for something big. “So I was thinking...what would you say, um. About giving me a chance?”

Kenny’s mouth drops open, his breezy facade fading away into icicles and razor blades.

No fucking way.

“You don’t get to do that. You don’t get to treat me like I’m second best.”

Kyle’s head swivels towards him fast enough his neck cracks. “Dude, that is not what I’m doing.”

“Isn’t it? In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not Stan, and Stan’s-“

“Everything,” Kyle cuts him off, a hard finality in his words. “Stan is my whole damn life. But I’ve always made room for you too. What you are to me-“

He falters then, searching for words, and Kenny can’t take it. He’s abruptly furious, and upset, heat under his skin. This is not the news he’s waited a week to hear.

“I don’t know what I am to you, Ky. You’ve never told me,” Kenny shouts, and then feels stupid about it, his words echoing against the walls.

He wasn’t going to do this. He wasn’t supposed to let himself get hurt.

Again.

Kyle, for his part, is blinking against Kenny’s tantrum.

It’s out of character - he so rarely gets mad anymore. Irritated, sure. Frustrated, yes. But it’s exhausting to fall into true rage, when there’s so many things in his life that deserve it.

His parents.

His circumstances.

His constant deaths.

Kenny prefers to roll with things, most days.

“I shouldn’t have yelled,” he apologizes, shoving a hand haphazard through his thick blond hair, messing it up even more. “It’s not your fault that...well. It’s not your fault.”

“Don’t act brain dead. All of this is my fault.” Kyle reaches across Kenny’s body, fingertips grazing the jut of his cheekbone. The lights overhead flicker like an omen. “I’ve made a spectacular mess of everything.”

“I let you.” Kenny shrugs. The weight of it all is settling back down on his shoulders, the unsteady counterbalance of affection and loathing putting him off balance.

“What I was trying to tell you,” Kyle starts solemnly, thumb tracing the line of Kenny’s jaw. “Is that Stan and I won’t work because of you.”

Kenny’s heart starts a low, insufferable racket, kick-drum style, in his chest.

He jokes, “Because I rocked your world, right?”

Kyle pauses, to look him dead in the eye. His gaze is evergreen bright. “That’s exactly right.”

“Uh.” Kenny’s laughter dies on his tongue. “Are you kidding?”

“Kissing him...it wasn’t what I remembered. It wasn’t like kissing you.”

“You’re fluffing my ego,” Kenny accuses.

“I’m telling the truth. I don’t want to compare the two of you - that’s not fair to anyone. And I still feel something for Stan. I can’t help it. I spent a lot of my life in love with the guy. I wanted him so, _so_ badly.”

Kenny winces. “Please. Do go on.”

Kyle brings his other hand up to cup Kenny’s opposite cheek. “But I didn’t know - I didn’t have any idea, that being with someone could be... like that.”

“So you want to use me for my body.” Kenny considers that. He’s not completely averse. “And it took you all this time to figure that out?”

Kyle snorts, red at the tips of his ears, his nose, in splotches along his throat. He’s nervous, but trying to hide it. “No, God. You’re one of my best friends. I like you. I’ve always liked you. I just. Never thought about how much I could like you. Huge oversight on my part. I see that now.”

How is this even happening? How is this even real?

“You don’t have to call me God, Kyle.”

Kenny leans into his hands now that he’s sure Kyle’s not going to snatch them away, and Kyle laughs uncertainly, desire and confusion tangled in his hitched breath.

He doesn’t know Kenny’s next move.

That must be _killing him_.

He smiles, anxious and fond, and says, “I _am_ sorry I kept you waiting. It took me a few minor – major – freak outs to get here. I think I’m developing agoraphobia.”

“Developing?”

Kyle makes a tiny mewl of displeasure, and it’s really…really, disgustingly cute.

On impulse, Kenny pulls back a little and presses his lips to Kyle’s right palm, his pulse taking up a conga beat.

“Alright, calm down.” He concludes, “What you’re saying is, you kissed Stan.”

Kyle’s pupils expand incrementally when Kenny’s mouth touches his skin. He exhales, “It was underwhelming.”

“Mediocre?”

“Almost amateur,” Kyle promises, and Kenny appreciates that he’s willing to lie to ease the hot spike of pain that the image of Stan and Kyle lip-locked conjures up for him. “Won’t happen again.”

“I’m holding you to that. You don’t get to fuck me a couple of times and then decide to run back to Marsh.”

The green of Kyle’s eyes darkens several shades, pupils growing wider by far. “You’re saying I can fuck you?”

“We can switch hit. I’m adventurous.”

“I’m not saying us being great in bed doesn’t sweeten the deal,” Kyle allows, swallowing audibly. He lowers his hands to settle them on Kenny’s waist, worn denim and the old leather of his belt. “But what if we- start out slow?”

“Slow?” Kenny asks, heart sinking.

Kyle must hear it. He says, “I know what I want. I’m ninety-five percent positive I know what I want.”

It’s as decisive as Kyle Broflovski ever gets.

“But I can’t mess this up.” He touches the plush of Kenny’s lower lip. “I want this to last.”

Oh.

“Are you questioning my endurance, Brof?”

“Kenny!”

“That’s a real slight to my honor, man, like you should know better- _mph_ -“

Kenny can’t finish fucking around with him because Kyle reels him close and kisses him.

They do that now.

For real.

* * *

**One Year Later**

* * *

 

“This sofa is hideous,” Stan bitches, propping one shoulder against the staircase wall and glowering down at the green and black brocade print.

“Tell me about it,” Kenny heaves, wiping sweat from his forehead. “But it’s got a lot of cushion for the pushing, if you know what I mean.”

Stan withdraws his hands from the fabric like he’s been burned. “Everyone knows what you mean, Kenny. People in space know what you fucking mean.”

Kenny smirks. “Prude.”

“Perv,” Stan shakes his head, a small smile curving his lips. “Okay, lift on three. One, two-“

They get the couch the rest of the way up the stairs, and finagle it carefully through the door of Craig and Clyde’s new apartment.

It’s a cushy place, given Clyde’s _sales_ job, which Craig swears up and down is not a front for human trafficking. He’s keeping mum about the possibility of cocaine, though. Or weed.

It would be just like Craig to date his dealer.

Kenny lets Clyde direct them where to drop the stupid sofa, which takes a lot of, “To the right- no left!” While Craig rolls his eyes and tells them, “I could not care less.”

That devolves into the happy couple bickering for a solid ten minutes, while Kenny and Stan sit on the couch, passing a snack bar between them.

“These crazy kids,” Kenny tells Stan. “I think they’re going to make it.”

“Young love,” Stan agrees. “Speaking of, where’s Ky?”

Once upon a time, Stan would’ve been the one keeping tabs on Kyle. Inside, Kenny allows his chest to warm. Outwardly, Kenny groans, and yells, “He better be coming up those stairs with a fucking box.”

Through the still-open door, Kyle grunts, “I am. Jesus, Craig, how much does your bong weigh?”

“That’s not my bong,” Craig retorts, still pissy at Clyde. “That’s Donovan’s shoe collection.”

“It’s sweet that you call your boyfriend by his last name,” Kyle replies, dropping the box with a thud in the entryway. He sags against the door frame and throws Kenny a grin. “Hey, babe.”

“Hi, sugar muffin. Nice of you to show.”

“Sorry. Work ran over.”

Kyle’s up at Hell’s Pass now. He’s recovering from all that doctor sex, slowly but surely. At least, he hasn’t tried to throw himself off Sentinel Hill yet.  

His mom hates that he didn’t flee back to Hipsterville, Washington, but she’s coming around to having her baby back, coddling him the way she did when they were kids. Kyle is basking in it, the fucker. He loves being a prodigal son.

Kenny beckons him over with a crooked finger, “It’s hot when you’re all professional. Get that sweet ass over here.

Kyle makes a real show of strutting around that box of shoes to the couch and then balancing himself delicately on Kenny’s lap, looping his arms around his neck. Kenny kisses Kyle soft and quick, and then longer and with slightly more hands involved, to which Stan moans beside them, “ _Guys_.”

So they fuck with Stan. Occasionally. All the time.

He deserves it.

As if to prove that point, Stan peeks out from where he’s covered his face with his hands and says, “Speaking of horrible, horrible single-dom, you guys haven’t, um. Seen Bebe around, have you?”

Kyle and Kenny exchange a look. Stan never learns.

Bebe spent most of the winter, well into spring, staging hits on the guy. Nothing obvious – slips on the ice, cut brakes, that kind of thing. It was only when he went to her, hat in hand, armed with an earnest apology, that the assassination attempts came to a halt.

Now they’re in this weird ex-space where they can’t figure out whether to be friends, cut off contact, or hold a few early morning booty calls.

And that’d be fine. Ish.

If Kenny and Kyle didn’t know for a fact that Stan was hitting it with Wendy. She’s cut off her weekly check-ins with Kenny, full stop, ever since she started getting regular dick pics again.

Cartman is most displeased.

Like Bebe will be, if she finds out.

There’s a real possibility Stan might die.

“Nah, man. Haven’t seen her.” Kenny says, holding his tongue and his opinions. Stan can and will do whatever the hell he wants. All Kyle and Kenny have to do is be there for him, after it all falls apart.

Together.

Kyle leans back into the circle of Kenny’s arms, “Haven’t seen her.”

“That whole deal is bad news bears, man,” Kenny adds, pressing his mouth against the back of Kyle’s neck.

Stan winces and glances away. “Can’t say you’re wrong.”

Kenny tucks his face into the crook of Kyle’s shoulder, hiding from that look on Stan’s face.

He’s never asked if Stan feels like he stole Kyle away – mostly because he knows the answer. It’s not like Stan has any idea that they weren’t for real, back when. He thinks Kyle had a crisis of faith, and that’s why he visited that one, fateful night that Stan and Bebe broke it off. He probably thinks that Kyle cheated on Kenny, and then regretted it.

Kenny’s thought about telling him the truth, but there’s no point.

Knowing that Kyle did want him, maybe, but changed his mind? That’s got to be worse than thinking he’d already given his heart away. Kenny tightens his arms around Kyle, and, in that intuitive way he has, Kyle laces his fingers with Kenny’s. Under the sound of Clyde and Craig bickering, he tells Kenny, “I was thinking about what you said.”

“About Thai food tonight?”

“About sex, at the hospital.”

Kenny is suddenly very, very interested. “And?”

“I can’t do it, dude. I get the immersion therapy aspect, but too many bad memories.”

“Shucks.”

“But.”

“But?”

“I’m willing to consider the parking lot.”

Kenny laughs, hiding it in the cloth of Kyle’s t-shirt. “You do have a thing for the great outdoors.”

“Speak for yourself,” Kyle protests. “And we’ve got to christen that car of yours.”

Out the window, the pretty teal car Stan and Kenny rebuilt is sitting curbside, still half-full of boxes. Kenny imagines taking Kyle in the backseat on all fours, licking along the notches of his spine. He prompts, “Now?”

“No, not now,” Kyle chuckles. He moves to say something else, but Stan asks, “What are you two conspiring about? Is it about me and Bebe? Because I’ve been thinking of a plan-”

“Oh, no,” Kenny interrupts. “Kyle and I don’t do plans.”

“Or schemes.”

“Or roleplay.” Kenny pauses. “Okay, maybe we do roleplay.”

“Nothing that involves pretend,” Kyle agrees.

“Except roleplay.”

Kyle nods along, “And that’s really a bedroom thing.”

Stan frowns. “Sick, dudes.”

“No one is roleplaying on that couch,” Craig announces, throwing himself between Stan and Kenny.

“Except us,” Clyde corrects.

“Can we please stop talking about roleplay?” Stan pleads. “It wasn’t that kind of plan.”

“They don’t do plans,” Craig tells Stan with a secretive little smirk, and that starts the whole vicious roleplay cycle over again.

* * *

 

Five months after he begins an inauspicious residency at Hell’s Pass Hospital, Kyle Broflovski sits in a bright teal car at the back of the parking lot. It’s the wee hours of the morning, right before his shift starts, and he’s got his head thrown back against the black leather seats.

He’s not even trying to be stealthy.

Kenny McCormick, newest enrollee at Park County Community College, is straddling his legs, kissing his neck, working at the front of his jeans, and the windows of the sporty little car are growing foggy with their comingled breath. There are a few editions of French existentialist books under Kenny’s knees, and he shoves them to the floor, trying to scramble out of his pants.

The parking lot isn’t the subtlest place to go to town on your boyfriend, but neither Kyle nor Kenny care about witnesses. Which is great, because there are a few.

Clyde Donovan, driving past on his way to work and completely oblivious to the whole thing, bickering on speaker phone with his boyfriend, Craig; the owner of the Kum & Go, who received Kenny’s resignation letter a week and a half ago and is frantically searching for replacements while he visits his sick father; and Carol McCormick, in search of an IV drip for a wicked bad hangover, who is mostly glad her son is turning his life around.

No one tells anyone about what they see, because Kyle and Kenny are old news.

And so the two of them are alone in this tiny world, wrapped in the car and each other. Kenny inhales while Kyle exhales, fully seated inside him. Flurries fall in soft whispers across the slick black of the lot, making the car a snow globe, a cocoon.

Together, they move, and nothing is fake. Not the way Kenny breathes Kyle’s name. Not the bruises slowly forming above his hipbones.

And definitely not the way Kyle winds his fingers in Kenny’s hair and murmurs, “ _I love you_.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me, circa 2010: I'm never writing South Park fic again. 
> 
> Me, circa August 2018: Okay, one tiny ficlet. 
> 
> Me, now: WHELP, THAT'S 36K. 
> 
> Take it from me, y'all. The muses are fickle, fickle creatures.

**Author's Note:**

> Alright, I'mma be honest here. I was never planning on writing anything else in this fandom. 
> 
> (Is this still a fandom? Is there a fandom for SP? Idek anymore.)
> 
> But I've been doing a slow upload of all my old SP stories from FFN, and the writing bug hit me out of nowhere. It's been just shy of ten years since I really committed to writing anything for SP (final chapter of SLU does not count), and I like to pretend I've improved. We'll see if that's true. 
> 
> I already have most of the second chapter written for this, and this is only going to be three parts total. So anyway. Idk. Idk. What am I doing with my life?


End file.
